The Princeton Rays have a great gallery of former players. Below are a few of those pictures. You can find the rest of the images on their Facebook page. [Princeton Rays Facebook]
Want a one-foot by one-foot piece of the Rays old FieldTurf? It will cost you $25 at next weekend’s FanFest, and all proceeds go to charity. For comparison, the Yankees sold one square-foot chunks of old Yankee Stadium sod for $120.
Of course, the Yankees may have missed their price-mark. Two years later, and they still haven’t sold all of the sod.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
One last note about the 2010 American League awards that is worth noting. Four of the top 10 finishers for AL MVP were drafted by the Rays. And three of those were drafted by Chuck Lamar.
1. Josh Hamilton — 1999, #1 overall
6. Evan Longoria — 2006, #3 overall
7. Carl Crawford — 1999, #52 overall (2nd round)
10. Delmon Young — 2003, #1 overall
Of course, only one of those guys will still be with the Rays in 2011, so let’s not get too excited.
Game 1 of the 2010 World Series is tonight, and each team has a slugger that used to be a key member of the Rays organization…
Josh Hamilton: Seeing the Rays’ former #1 pick thrive with the Rangers is kinda like breaking up with that one crazy chick in college and then having her grow up to be Katy Perry.
Pat Burrell: Seeing Burrell thrive for the Giants (while being paid by the Rays) is more like getting a divorce and then seeing your ex-wife use the alimony for liposuction and a boob-job.
So, which one is more painful for you to watch in this World Series? Let’s hear it in the comments.
Here is a snippet from my latest at Business Insider….
Of the 20 biggest bargains in baseball, only five (25%) are pitchers despite making up nearly half of most rosters. While teams will always need good pitching to be successful, this shows that teams are more likely to find value with position players. It is the overachieving hitters that will turn a $70 million payroll into a 95-win team.
Josh Hamilton Plays $29M Above His Measly $3.25M Salary [Business Insider]
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
click above image for boxscore
THE GOOD: John Jaso. Recently, any time the Rays would get the bases loaded with no outs, our initial reaction has been “oh crap.” But JJ Dyn-O-Mite came through in the 6th. After being down 0-2 in the count, he battled back to a full count and then delivered a game-tying 2-run single…Maddonology. Last week, Maddon wouldn’t intentionally walk David Ortiz with first base open and Big Papi made the Rays pay with a big home run. Last night, with first base open, Maddon did go with the free pass. After a walk, Grant Balfour and Randy Choate teamed to strikeout the next two batters to get out of the 1-out, bases loaded jam and keep the game tied…Bullpen. Matt Garza put the Rays in a hole, but the bullpen picked up the slack. Six relievers combined for 6 innings and gave up just 1 run on 3 hits and 2 walks. The only baserunner in the final 2.2ip was a broken bat single in the 9th. And how awesome is the lights out combo of Joaquin Benoit and Rafael Soriano? We thought last winter that the Rays biggest need was a flame-throwing relief pitcher and World B. Friedman gave us two. This may be hyperbole, but when the Rays are playing well, they remind us a lot of the 1996 Yankees with Benoit and Soriano in the roles of Mariano Rivera and John Wetteland…CC’s Golden Glove. We didn’t think Carl Crawford was a gold glover last year, especially under MLB’s rules of not distinguishing amongst the three outfield spots. But they might as well give Crawford the 2010 award right now. He had another spectacular diving catch that kept the Red Sox 4-run 3rd from being any worse than it already was.
THE BAD: Matt Garza. Let’s hope The Garza Complex got that out of his system. The Rays are not going to win many games when their starter allows 9 baserunners in the first 3 innings, especially against the Red Sox and Yankees…Suicidal Squeeze. After tying the game in the 6th, the Rays still had a runner on 3rd with no outs. Ben Zobrist’s squeeze attempt ended with the runner thrown out at home…Willy Aybar. He was 1-4, but left 6 runners on base, including 4 runners in scoring position.
THE TELLING: Sean Rodriguez has started 23 of the last 27 games…Several of the Rays with the high-cuffed pants are no longer wearing stirrups and instead appear to have opted for striped socks…Former Rays (or Rays prospects) in the all-star game include Ty Wigginton (Bal), Evan Meek (Pit) and Josh Hamilton (Tex). Delmon Young is in the running for the final spot on AL roster…
WHERE THEY STAND: The Rays are 49-33, 2 games behind the Yankees in the East and one-half game ahead of the Red Sox in the Wild Card. After 82 games in 2008, the Rays were 50-32.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
[Update] Josh confirmed the photos and admits that he was drinking. Says it was an isolated incident.
“I’m embarrassed about it, personally, for the Rangers, for my wife, my children and my family,” Hamilton said at his locker with a handful of his teammates joining the crowd of media that had formed. “It reinforces one of the things that I can’t have is alcohol. It’s unfortunate that it happened. I was out there getting ready for the season and took my focus off the number one factor in my recovery – my relationship with Christ. I hate that this happened…”I wasn’t mentally fit or spiritually fit,” he said. “It just crossed my mind ‘Can I have a drink?’ Obviously, I can’t. One drink leads to two and two drink leads to 10 or 12.
[12:46pm] Sad story being reported today by Deadspin. They have obtained several pictures of Josh Hamilton. These photos show Hamilton shirtless in a Tempe, Arizona bar last March.
The pictures do not show Hamilton drinking, but he is definitely doing things with some young women that a married man should not be doing. If you click on each individual photo at Deadspin, you can read the story from the person that took the photos.
One caption…
The girls left. According to one patron, Hamilton, piss-drunk by that point, asked the manager where he could buy blow. The manager didn’t know. “Let’s go to a strip club,” Hamilton said. Someone drove Hamilton to Les Girls in Phoenix, Arizona.
Again, Hamilton is not seen drinking or doing drugs in any of these photos, but as the author noted, “would a sober Josh Hamilton agree to be photographed laying across the bar shirtless, covered in whip cream with his head between a random girl’s crotch?”
Since Hamilton was lost by the Rays in the Rule 5 Draft in 2007 and became an All-Star outfielder, many have ripped the Rays front office for giving up on the former #1 overall pick so easily. Others argued that no matter how good he is or how good he becomes, his life is always going to be one drink away from falling back into that very deep, and very dark hole.
Let’s hope for Josh’s sake that there is a very good explanation for this.
HERE is a second story via Deadspin in which Hamilton’s mentor responds to the allegations. Also, the Rangers will address the photos prior to today’s game.
The Devil Is Still In Josh Hamilton [Deadspin]
Red Sox GM Theo Epstein appeared on Cal Ripken’s XM Radio show, Ripken Baseball. Epstein was asked about the sudden surge of the Tampa Bay Rays.
“Obviously they’ve been picking at the top part of the draft for the better part of a decade now and they haven’t missed with those picks. When you draft number one overall, you have to get a franchise-type player and they have. They’ve got plenty of them and they’ve done a great job drafting lower down as well and developing their players…”
There is only one small problem with that assessment:
Number of “number one overall” players on the Rays’ roster: 0
Prior to David Price, last season and Tim Beckham this season, the Rays have only drafted #1 two times, one of which was Josh Hamilton in 1999, whom the Rays lost in the Rule 5 draft.
Certainly one can say that the other top pick (Delmon Young in 2003) helped shape this roster as Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett were acquired in an off-season trade for Young. But that is still only one “number one overall” player that has led to the Rays success this season and Andrew Friedman and Co. deserve a little more credit for that trade than just “they have sucked for 10 years.”
Also, the Rays are far from the only team that has consistently drafted near the top of the draft for the last 10 years (Pirates, Royals, etc.) and yet the Rays are the only team that consistently drafts and develops top-rate players.
And while the Red Sox may not draft near the top, they have become experts in the art form of hording compensation picks for lost free agents. In the last four drafts alone, the Red Sox have selected 13 players before the second round.
Let’s reword Epstein’s statement to reflect why the Red Sox have been so successful…
“Obviously they’ve been picking tons of players in the first round of the draft for the better part of a decade now and they haven’t missed with those picks. When you draft 13 first round players in four years, a team is bound to hit the bullseye a couple of times even if their eyes are shut. They’ve got plenty of them and they’ve done a great job hording compensation picks as well as copying the organizational philosophy of the Evil Empire by throwing $100 million at a pitcher that might win 16 games…”
Theo Epstein on the Rays [MLB ON XM]
THE BAD: Marc Lancaster deciding to blog about Matt Garza’s attempt at a no-hitter and then having Matt give up the no-hitter and the shutout, on the very next pitch. C’mon Marc. Let’s save the Live-Blogging to the professionals…
THE TELLING: This was the Rays’ 6th sweep of the season and 1st on the road…The Rays still have a 4-game lead over Oakland in the wild card. They are 4.5 up on the Twins and 5 games ahead of the Yankees. It is nice to see a 2-team bumper between the Rays and the Yankees.
DEVIL RAYS WEBTOPIA…
“The scary thing is this guy’s capable of doing that time and time again,” Rays pitching coach Jim Hickey said. “This isn’t like some game he pitched way above and beyond what he’s capable of doing. This is something, you hear people throw out (Braves great) John Smoltz and compare him to that, and you watch him do something like that, and it’s not all that farfetched.”
The Good: Carlos Pena not only his 10th home run in the 3rd inning to give the Rays the lead 2-1, but he also walked 3 times. In the Orioles series Pena was on base 10 times in 13 plate appearances including a double, triple, home run and 5 walks. And the home run was to the opposite field. I’d say he is zeroed in…More great defense (*yawn*). A diving catch in the first by Carl Crawford. James Shields ended the 3rd by picking Brian Roberts off first as he was trying to get into scoring position. In the 5th Aki Iwamura made a great play up the middle for the third out, that probably saved a run…Evan Longoria. In his last 9 games, Dirtbag is 13-37 (.351) with 5 doubles, 3 home runs and 12 RBI.
The Bad: Natty Light.
The Telling: At 30-20, the Rays are tied for the best record in baseball…The Professor is now 3-3 in his series over/unders predictions in the “Pepper” series at the beginning of each series.
DEVIL DOGS WEBTOPIA…
