2018 Tampa Bay Rays

[treymancini]

MLB TRADE WHISPERS
If it's rumored, we hear it...
DIAMONDBACKS ACQUIRE MALLEX SMITH

The Arizona Diamondbacks have acquired speedster outfielder Mallex Smith from the Rays in exchange for reliever Jared Miller. Smith is a lightning quick outfielder with great baserunning instincts who instantly becomes an awesome bench weapon. He has hit only .200/.276/.358, but he has some potential to break out.

The Snakes must have really liked Mallex, because they gave up one of the best young relievers in baseball in Jared Miller. Miller is a two-pitch reliever with a wipeout slider and a strong fastball with late movement. He has pitched to a 3.35 ERA this season for Arizona in 37.2 IP, although his 6.9 BB/9 is concerning given the command issues that have dogged him throughout his career. Still, the talent is undeniable, and he too has massive breakout potential.

Although the Rays are out of the playoff hunt, the Snakes are only 4 games back of a wild card, and clearly they believe Mallex Smith will provide more benefit to their hopes. Their bullpen has had its struggles this season, coming last in the NL, but they appear to have found a good group of guys midseason.

[treymancini]

Unfortunately most of the bad teams are being stupid and holding on to Britton, Machado, Brach, Moustakas, etc. so this is going to be a boring deadline today.

[mgom27]

You never no.

[treymancini]

Originally Posted by mgom27

You never no.

Thanks for reading!

[treymancini]

@ Angels

We started this series off on the wrong foot, as Yonny Chirinos faltered in a 6-3 loss to the Angels.

[treymancini]

MLB TRADE WHISPERS
If it's rumored, we hear it...

METS ACQUIRE ANGEL PAGAN

As the last few hours of trade season slipped away, the Mets struck a deal to upgrade in the outfield over the struggling Jay Bruce by acquiring Angel Pagan from the Rays in exchange for relief prospect Gerson Bautista and $750,000 in cash. Minor league outfielder David Olmedo-Barrera will head to New York to complete the deal. Pagan has had a career rennasaince at age 37 after not appearing in the majors last year and failing to break camp with the Rays this year. Pagan has hit .297/.342/.378 as a starting outfielder for the Rays, and is under control for the rest of the season at a 1.1 million price tag. He is a plus defender, and a decent enough hitter, and shores up a major weakness for the Mets.

Gerson Bautista has good stuff and poor movement, but ultimately his three pitches might be enough to carve out a major league role. He has a 3.38 ERA at the A+ level this year. Olmedo-Barrera is not much of a prospect, but could have a bench role one day, due to a strong power bat.

Prospect Justin Williams (#10 Rays) was promoted to take the place of Pagan.

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Pitchers Overview:
Yonny Chirinos: 115 IP, 4.70 ERA, 1.5 WAR
Chaz Roe: 49 IP, 4.22 ERA, 1.2 WAR
Alex Colome: 56 IP, 3.21 ERA, 0.9 WAR
Alec Mills: 36.1 IP, 3.72 ERA, 0.6 WAR
Anthony Banda: 14.2 IP, 3.68 ERA, 0.5 WAR
Jared Miller: 38.2 IP, 3.26 ERA, 0.3 WAR
Ryan Weber: 16.1 IP, 3.86 ERA, 0.2 WAR
Jaret Martin: 5.2 IP, 3.18 ERA, 0.1 WAR
Austin Pruitt: 10 IP, 4.50 ERA, -0.1 WAR
Tim Hill: 43 IP, 4.81 ERA, -0.1 WAR
Diego Castillo: 60.1 IP, 4.62 ERA, -0.3 WAR
Ryan Yarbrough: 85 IP, 5.29 ERA, -0.4 WAR

You can see the beginnings of a rotation taking shape with Alec Mills and Anthony Banda off to hot starts, but this is still mostly a mess.

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Batters Overview:
CF Kevin Kiermaier: .246/.298/.385, 2 WAR
SS/3B Matt Duffy: .249/.300/.333, 1.1 WAR
LF/RF Hunter Renfroe: .309/.329/.513, 0.8 WAR
1B/LF/RF Jake Bauers: .279/.334/.414, 0.5 WAR
C Raudy Read: .260/.301/.468, 0.4 WAR
LF/CF Denard Span: .272/.327/.389, 0.3 WAR
2B Max Schrock: .293/.305/.448, 0.2 WAR
3B/2B Willy Adames: .206/.313/.338, 0 WAR
RF Justin Williams: Not played Yet
C Jesus Sucre: .200/.226/.313, -0.2 WAR
U Daniel Robertson: .220/.303/.349, -0.5 WAR
U Grant Kay: .065/.065/.065, -0.6 WAR
2B/1B Christian Arroyo: .164/.238/.200, -0.8 WAR

There’s a lot of ugly here honestly. Only Raudy Read and Max Schrock haven’t been terrible from our rookies. Our two war leaders are glove first guys. Not good.

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@ Angels cont.
Game two against the angels saw the debut of Justin Williams, who hit a double off Garrett Richards, but overall this wasn’t the best of games for us, as we lost handedly to the Angels, 5-8. Anthony Banda got hurt yet again, Luis Perdomo will take his place. The final game was a 7-4 win, Renfroe hit a homer, Schrock hit two doubles, Williams hit his second double, and Alec Mills threw well.

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vs Chicago Sox
Ryan Weber was stellar for us in this game, throwing 6.2 IP of 2 ER ball. A big double by Raudy Read got the scoring going. We hammered the Sox 11-3 in game 2, young Justin Williams getting player of the game for his 4-5 effort. Luis Perdomo had a quality start. Matt Duffy is out for 5 weeks.

THE NATIONALS HAVE BROKEN THE RECORDS FOR MOST RUNS SCORED AND LARGEST BLOWOUT WITH A 42-0 WIN OVER THE REDS!
Daniel Murphy won player of the game for getting 7 hits in 7 at-bats. The nats scored in every inning: 2, 6, 3, 5, 5, 16, 1, 7, 4 over the eight innings they hit. They got 7 homers and hit 33 times, with 21 walks. I almost didn’t notice this game because it doesn’t trigger a storyline but Murphy’s 7 hits does. Strasburg and Joe Ross meanwhile combined for a shutout, allowing 6 hits and no walks.

Nick Solak (#16 Rays) was promoted to be our DH, shifting Renfroe to LF, Bauers to 1B, Arroyo to 3B, and Adames to SS to deal with the Duffy injury.

In game 3, Austin Pruitt gave a strong effort, and Kiermaier hit a walk-off single after Jared Miller blew a save for us to win it 4-3 and sweep the white sox!

Lots of season ending injuries. Astros SP Charlie Morton, Brewers SP Brandon Woodruff, Angels 1B Albert Pujols, and Pirates RP Josh Smoker are out for the season. IF Brock Holt of Boston and SP Masahiro Tanaka of NYY got into a classic rivalry duel and will be suspended 4 and 6 games respectively.

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vs. BAL
The Orioles took game 1 6-7 in a tough loss as Diego Castillo coughed up a solo homer in the 9th to give the Orioles a lead. After that though, we won the next two, as Hunter Renfroe and Willy Adames went off to get 6-3 and 6-5 games. All of a sudden, Adames is nearing an .800 OPS and .400 OBP, after several incredible games.

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@ Toronto
In game one, we were down to our last out with the tying run on but couldn’t bring him in, losing 3-4 and wasting Luis Perdomo’s good start. In game two though, Austin Pruitt got hammered but we in turn scored 5 runs off of Cy Young candidate Aaron Sanchez, ultimately being down 7-8 when a Daniel Robertson 2-run blast reversed our fortunes and gave us the 9-8 win as Castillo nailed down a save. Willy Adames was player of the game with two singles, a homer, and a walk.

Arizona CF Jarrod Dyson was suspended 4 games for fighting the Reds’ RP Austin Brice who will miss a whopping 9 games! We found out Christian Arroyo will miss 3 weeks with a rib fracture. Brandon Lowe has been promoted from Durham to give it a shot. We are fast running low on players in Durham who deserve any chance in the majors. Kay and Lowe are already a stretch.

Big news from the front office though. We have extended reliever Alex Colome for 3 years and 22.8 million dollars. This buys out one of his free agency years and pays him slightly below arb value for the first year, slightly above the second year, and near 9 million his third year.

In game 3, six Rays had multi-hit games, including guys like Grant Kay. Renfroe hit a massive grand slam, and Adames stayed hot with three hits.
We won the game easily, putting up 13 runs.

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Around the league, we have passed the Braves and the Rangers, and now hold 25th place in the league. The Nationals have gotten very hot and took a commanding lead in the NLeast. The Padres, despite being 16 games behind in their own division, hold a 6 game lead on the first nl wild card, and have the fifth best record in baseball. The Astros finally passed the Mariners, and the Twins are closing in on the INdians.

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@ NYY

Facing the Yankees is always challenging. In the first game, Jake Bauers hit a homer, but we ultimately failed to score off Sabahia after that first inning and lost 2-5. The second game was incredible though. Luis Perdomo threw a 2-hit shutout! For that to come against the Yankees is even more awesome. We won 6-0. In the final game, Ryan Weber was hammered for 7 runs in under 5 innings. His days in the rotation are numbered. He was optioned to Durham, and Anthony Banda was reinstated from the DL>

On the injury front, Joe Kelly of the Red Sox bullpen is out for the season, and reliever AJ Ramos of the Mets is also done for the year. Top prospect Esteury Ruiz, who we acquired in the Jake Faria deal, is also out for the remainder of the minor league season. Joe Panik of the Giants has a 20-game hit streak. He already had a 2018-best 26-game streak earlier this year.

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@ Boston
Three-game sweep at the hands of baseball’s most infamous cheaters (at least in my OOTP universe, where justice prevails). We made it to 7-7 extra innings in game 1, but Castillo allowed a walk-off solo shot to Bogaerts. In the second game, we tried to claw back from an early deficit but fell 5-6. The third game, Alec Mills was injured and we barely limped to a 1-5 loss.

David Hernandez of the Reds will miss the rest of the season with a Torn Flexor tendon.

[progen]

42-0. Wow! Interesting to see the Reds never change, even in OOTP!

[treymancini]

vs. Kansas City
Coming in and facing the Royals did not go as well as expected. Our bullpen was exhausted from injuries and the lack of home games, leading to Denard Span pitching a scoreless relief inning in a 0-4 loss. The next game saw yet another injury, this time Luis Perdomo being the recipient. We really need to fire our trainer, this is getting horrible. The bullpen tried their best but were already exhausted and had to cover for a long start, and we lost in extras 6-7. The third game was a 1-3 loss where many, many batters were left on base by both teams. Before the third game we called up rookie Edwin Fierro, and he threw two shutout innings of relief. The final game was a 9-2 win, where Chirinos nailed down the KC offense for seven strong innings.

Bad news on the injury front, Luis Perdomo is out for the season with a hamstring strain. He threw 25 innings of 2.52 ERA ball for us, allowing zero homers and posting 0.6 WAR. He will be a rotation candidate next year. Chris Archer was activated in his place.

Our DL rotation is pretty much better than our regular one:
SP1 Blake Snell
SP2 Alec Mills
SP3 Luis Perdomo
SP4 Matt Andriese
SP5 Chih-Wei Hu
CL Jose Alvarado
RP Miguel Gonzalez
RP Jose De Leon

Plus a lot of pitching injuries in the minors hurt our depth too. Max Schrock has also hit the DL with a substantial collarbone bruise. This is more of a precaution than anything, we must protect our good players. Joey Wendle was recalled in his place.

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vs. Boston

Game 1 saw us matched up against Chris Sale, and it actually didn’t go as bad as expected. Grant Kay of all people was teeing off Sale, and Anthony Banda had a decent start. Sadly, a poor showing from the pen led to a 3-7 loss. Game 2 was vs Eduardo Rodriguez, with Chris Archer making his return for us. Archer threw an abbreviated start but still got through six shutout innings. Hill, Colome, and Miller finished off a 2-0 win, in which Denard Span helped drive the offense for our only scoring. Game three was yet another lefty, Drew Pomeranz, and he was outpitched by Rays starter Austin Pruitt. Renfroe hit a homer, and Kay continued to swing a hot bat, as the sox were downed 4-2. We are now 53-78.

Joe Panik had his hitting streak snapped at 30 games, an impressive mark.

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@ Atlanta

Game one was a pitcher’s duel loss, 0-2. A 2-run homer off of Chirinos proved the only runs in this game, as the offense wasted a player of the game performance from Chirinos. The second game was a 3-14 blowout, in which Ryan Yarbrough got hammered on his return to the starting rotation, from which he was promptly bumped. We optioned Edwin Fierro, activated Alec Mills, and sent Matt Andriese to rehab. We claimed infielder Alen Hanson from the Giants to help shore up our triple-A squad.

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@ Cleveland

We found out why this team is so good. Chris Archer got destroyed by Cleveland’s balanced offense, and Trevor Bauer shut down our own offense. At this point, the rosters expand. I’m not going to do my usual monthly stats update since they will be so similar to the final stats at this point.

We promoted: Relievers Ryne Stanek, Ian Hamilton, Jaime Schultz, Andy Beltre (who was just signed to a contract as a free agent).

Game 2 was yet another crushing defeat, with Alec Mills holding on well but the bullpen allowing some key runs to Lindor and the Indians, with a 4-6 loss. Game three saw us take a 9-4 lead, but slowly lose it over the course of the game. Fortunately, we survived thanks to Alex Colome and hung on to the 9-8 lead. Oddly, Colome was given the win by the official scorer, even though usual standards would not have had that happen.

The Dodgers were the first to clinch and the white sox were the first to be eliminated from playoff contention.