Having said that, I can at least make an argument for trading Carl Crawford during Spring Training.  Why?  Because this is going to get messy.

The hype is here.  The Rays enter Spring Training with its most talented team ever.  They’re all saying it.  I tend to agree.  So, here’s my problem.  I am convinced that the Rays will not be able to re-sign CC.  His price tag is going to be too high.  He will be the prize of the off-season free agent class.  The Yankees and the Red Sox will fall all over each other trying to bring him on board. 

I would hate to see the Rays get only draft picks for Carl.  The return that he could bring in a trade should be pretty high.  So, when do you deal?  If this is the most talented team in Rays history, they will be flirting with playoff contention on August 1.  Trading CC at deadline if they are within sneezing distance of the playoffs would be a PR nightmare.  Read the rest of this entry »

And this from the Red Sox flagship, NESN:

Tampa should be stronger at the end of games if Soriano performs up to expectations, but with the loss of Red Sox killer Akinori Iwamura and several other departures from their middle relief corps, the Rays don’t seem to have made up a considerable amount of ground on either the Red Sox or Yankees.

Looks like bulletin board material for me.  According to them, Aki was the key to this season.  That, and the departure of several middle relievers?  Will someone help me out with that?  I guess they are referring to the rejects that the Red Sox picked up.

ESPN’s Jayson Stark gave his early assessment of the Rays.  And, Rays fans should be happy.  I won’t dwell, but the highlights are “It isn’t last year anymore” and “They have a closer”.  Enough for me. 

So, if there’s anything from Stark’s piece that sums it up, it’s this:

By the way, this team also has Keith Law’s No. 7-ranked pitching prospect in baseball, Jeremy Hellickson, looming just over the horizon. So while this might not be as ballyhooed a rotation as the groups in Boston and the Bronx, if all these light bulbs go on at once, look out.

Felipe Lopez finished last season with a .310 batting average and a .386 OBP.  He hit over .300 vs. both left-handed and right-handed pitchers, so no need for a platoon.  He has a year of 44 stolen bases, so he has some speed and some Joe Maddon-esque skills. 

Felipe Lopez earned $3.5 million last year.  But, we are into spring training and he remains unsigned.  You have to figure his price tag is taking a hit.  According to yahoo.com, the Rays are not currently among four team entertaining interest in Lopez.  Maybe he becomes more appealing now that he has canned  uber-agent Scott Boras.

Win or else.  Felipe Lopez makes sense.  Stabilize the infield.  Anchor Zorilla in right field.    Owner Stuart Sternberg has said that 2010 is THE year.  Payroll will decline after this season.  If the Rays are playing “all in”, signing a veteran second baseman like Lopez makes sense. Last year, he hit .315 as a leadoff hitter, so he would give the Rays another option to top the batting order. 

If the Rays are going to contend with the Yankees and Red Sox, Felipe Lopez makes sense.  He would remove any question about the lineup and what it would look like on a daily basis.  If this is the year, sign this free agent and see where the Rays end up in the standings.

“Last year, we had a lot of problems with the back end of our bullpen. Now, I think we’ve got that settled signing Rafael Soriano away from the Braves. Now, we don’t have to panic in the eighth and ninth inning when we have a one- or two-run lead.”

***

CBS Sports’ Danny Knobler posted his preview of the 2o10 Rays the other day.  I thought it was a typical review taken from a national perspective.  It highlights the star players a little, takes swipes at attendance, and speculates that they won’t be able to retain Carl Crawford.  One piece I do take issue with is this:

You can even argue that if the Rays hadn’t made two mistakes last winter (trading Jackson for underwhelming Matt Joyce, and signing Pat Burrell to a terrible two-year contract), they would have had more of a chance to make big moves this winter. 

I maintain that it’s still too early to assess the Matt Joyce trade.  Edwin Jackson really didn’t have a place on last year’s roster.  And, in the end, were his numbers that much better than Jeff Niemann’s?  If, at the end of the 2010 season, Matt Joyce hasn’t progressed with the big league team, then the trade can be proclaimed a disappointment.   

As far as Pat Burrell goes, of course hindsight says it was a bad signing.  But, I don’t think that’s the main reason the Rays haven’t been more active in this off-season.  They Rays had several other contracts that elevated over the winter.  It’s hard to strap the blame on these two moves.

***

Finally, Buster Olney’s report on Carl Crawford airs this afternoon at 12:30 p.m. ET on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight.

No doubt, the right field and second base situations for the Rays are unsettled.  It all hinges on where they decide to station Ben Zobrist.  Or, IF they decide to station Ben Zobrist. 

Matt Joyce figures to be in the right field mix.  He’s coming of a solid season at Triple-A Durham where he hit .273 with 16 HR and 66 RBI. 

He told Dick Scanlon of the Lakeland Ledger he’s ready for the competition, but he’s getting used to spring traing battles for playing time.

“I was very stressed out (last year) about where I was going to play, when I was going to play, getting called up and sent down.  The past two years have kind of been a roller-coaster, so that experience has been beneficial heading into this year. Hopefully, it’ll calm the nerves and help me relax a little more.”

My money’s on him making the team out of spring training.  It will be interesting if his hitting will persuade the Rays to keep Zobrist in the infield.

Like I promised, here is Keith Law’s top 100 prospects. A whopping 6 Rays made his top 100 list, compared to only four from the AOL Fanhouse list. Desmond Jennings is the only in the top 10 at 6. Wade Davis is at 15, Jeremy Hellickson is at 17 and Tim Beckham at 29 to round out the Rays in the top 50. Matt Sweeney, who came over in the Scott Kazmir deal and could be the Rays first baseman in a couple years, came in at 68. Matt Moore made the list as the final Ray at 81. Read the rest of this entry »

MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo came out with his top 50 prospects list. His list looks a lot different from MLB Fanhouse’s list I published the other day. The Rays had four prospects in the top 50. Desmond Jennings is ranked at #6, Wade Davis at 13, Jeremy Hellickson at 20 and Tim Beckham at 24. I think Mayo is too high on Davis and Beckham and underrating DJ and Hellickson.

I tend to agree with the Fanhouse list more than this one. ESPN’s Keith Law’s list will be released today, and I will post it here. It will be interesting to see what Law has to say.

MLB Fanhouse ranked their top 100 MLB prospects yesterday. The Rays prospects are getting more love in these lists as spring training goes forward. Three Rays made the top 25, with two in the top ten. Desmond Jennings was ranked at 3, Jeremy Hellickson was at 10, and Wade Davis was at 17. Tim Beckham, the only other Ray in the top 100 was at 77.

Here is what they had to say about Jennings:

You can talk about Jennings’ outstanding five-tool abilities, and, yes, they are very impressive. But what makes him so fascinating is his combination of those tools and his rapidly improving instincts and feel at the plate. This is a player that’s going to hit for a very high average, and has skills at the plate that resemble Yankees’ legend Derek Jeter.

You know you are doing something right when you are being compared to Derek Jeter before you ever play a game in the Major Leagues. The only potential problems DJ could have is if the injury bug bites him again to set back his path to the big leagues.

Hellickson:

Perhaps the most universally underappreciated pitching prospect in the minors, Hellickson has almost silently moved his way up the ladder. He has the potential for three above-average pitches and has pinpoint command that stacks up with any pitcher on this list. He’s undersized, about the only thing a critic could point to, and could be a factor for the Rays in 2010.

And finally, here is what they said about Davis:

The Rays are a player-development machine, and Davis is yet another example of that. He has front-of-the-rotation-type stuff and showed it with some strong performances down the stretch with the big-league club. He could be a major factor for them out of spring training this year.

I have to agree with everything they have to say. All three have the potential to be big league stars in the not so distant future.

The first pitch hasn’t been thrown, yet Bert Blyleven, writing a piece for MSNBC.com, has written off the Rays in the AL East. 

The World Series champion New York Yankees should be as good as ever, and the Boston Red Sox will be right in the mix, too. The Rays are still the potential third contender among the other AL East teams is the Rays, but they will need to stay healthy and have a lot of things to go right.

Is that a fair assessment? 

To say that the Rays, or any team for that matter, must stay healthy is an obvious one.  The Yankees would be a different team if CC Sabathia or Derek Jeter were to come up lame. 

Within Blyleven’s team-by-team analysis, he seems to hit on the main points of the Rays.  I do disagree a little with his assessment of an “inexperienced” bullpen.  With Dan Wheeler, JP Howell and Grant Balfour at the back-end of the ‘pen leading up to Rafael Soriano, it seems like they have pitched in a few big games over the past couple of years. 

Overall, probably not a bad assessment.  The starting pitching will need to improve, or pitch to their potential, to surpass the Yankees and Red Sox.  I’m just not sure that’s much of a stretch.   I’m just not sure I’m ready to write off the season already.