THE HANGOVERStop The Friggin Presses! Curt Schilling Will Not Pitch For The Rays In 2008!

Team USA 10 , Mesa 2.
Evan Longoria did not start, but he did pinch hit in the 5th and played third base, going 1-2 with a single and a walk. Justin Ruggiano started in left and went 1-4. Ruggiano also stole a base.
Peo Javelinas 4, Scottsdale 3.
Reid Brignac went 0-5…again. John Jaso was 1-4 with a strikeout.

DEVIL RAYS WEBTOPIA…

• This shouldn’t even be newsworthy so we won’t bother to give it its own post. Curt Schilling did not list the Devil Rays among the teams he would consider playing for in 2008. And seeing how he pitched the last month of the season and the playoffs, no team should want him, unless he is strictly a post-season starter. When he needs to, he can still get by on guts, but no pitcher can keep that up over the course of an entire season. And don’t give us this crap about how great he would be for the young pitching staff. If that was the case, why spend $8-12 million for one season on an over-the-hill pitcher, when you could just hire somebody like Orel Hershiser or another recently retired, above-average, starting pitcher to be the pitching coach for a whole lot less. Of course, the best part of this, is we no longer have to read about the “possibility” of Schilling pitching for the Rays in 2008. And by “possibility” we mean “There was never a chance in hell”. [tampabay.com]
• Backup catcher Josh Paul filed for free agency. That leaves the Rays with starter Dioner Navarro and Shawn Riggans who saw limited action at the major league level in 2007 before succumbing to injury. Most managers prefer at least one veteran catcher, even more so with a young pitching staff. Look for the Rays to make an attempt to resign Paul or pursue another veteran free agent catcher this off-season. [tampabay.com]
• We weren’t the only ones that loathed the idea of another championship for the Red Sox. Raymond did not take it to well either. But on brighter news, Raymond is going to get a makeover to coincide with the new Rays logo and colors. [The Big Blue Blog]
• What are the chances of the Rays winning the World Series in 2008? Apparently the same as Dennis Kucinich becoming President in 2008. So you’re telling me there’s a chance! [A Large Regular]

The Hangover: If The Devil Rays Scored 42 Runs On A Football Sunday, Would Anybody Notice?

Devil Rays 6, Red Sox 4.
The Devil Rays played yesterday? Unfortunate that the Rays pulled off their best performance in over a week, when the game was played at the same time as a Bucs home game in which the Bucs looked as good as they have since the 2003 season opener against the F’eagles*.

*We are of course dismissing every game since then against the Falcons and Michael Vick.

DEVIL RAYS WEBTOPIA…

• On Saturday, the Rays hitters broke the AL record for strikeouts in a season. BJ Upton became the first member of the 20-20 club in franchise history. [USA Today]
• Apparently beating Tim Wakefield is a “sign of progress”. We believe being dominated by a knuckleballer is #4,376 on the list of reasons why the Rays are yet to experience success as a team. It comes in just ahead of “too many rainouts at the Trop” and just behind “Joe Maddon’s shoe size”. Believe us, we understand that finding an angle on a game with one week remaining in the last week of yet another 90+ loss season is a trying task at best. But Papa Joe…come back to us. please. [TBO]
• Carl Crawford did not play this weekend and with only one week remaining, he may not return this season. [tampabay.com]

“I’m not so sure right now he’s going to be able to do this,” Maddon said. “We’re hopeful for the first game back (Tuesday), but it just doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere we need it to go for him to participate right now. We’ll look at it again after the day off but I’m not anticipating he wil be able to play.”

• Joe Maddon makes a case for Delmon Young to be rookie of the year. [TBO]

“You put the whole picture together to tie this whole thing into a nice little bundle, and I think it equals Rookie of the Year,” Maddon said. “Everybody just wants to talk about offense – talk about his defense and his stolen bases this year. He’s playing a complete game for us right now.”

• Joe Maddon probably should have saved his “Delmon Young for tookie of the year” speech for the Yankees series as it likely fell on deaf ears with the Boston Media. The voting members of the Boston are likely to already have their vote cast for Dustin Pedroia. [courant.com]
• Marc Topkin interviews Joe Maddon. We love, love, love the last question “ Since the Rays won’t be in it this year, who do you think is going to win the World Series?”. ON the surface it seems a little ridiculous that Topkin would need to preface that question by informing the manager that his team has already been eliminated from playoff contention. But in Topkin’s defense. He is interviewing Papa Joe Maddon, the eternal optimist. [tampabay.com]
• Stacy Long offers his thoughts on the pitchers and hitters that should be named as the top minor leaugers for 2007. Not much to argue with. [Stacy Long’s Riverwalk Talk]
• The team decided to shut down James Shields for the remainder of the 2007 season, but will not do the same with Scott Kazmir, who will make his next scheduled start, stating that the lefty has looked fresher than Shields recently. [Devil Rays]
• We didn’t write it, but we were thinking it. This was one campaign that we are sure seemed much better on the drawing board. [The Serious Tip]
• Al Reyes hopes to have his option ($2 million) picked up for 2008. It should not even be a question. Reyes mentions that he would prefer to close but would be willing to be used as a setup man if that is what is asked of him. [TBO]
• Wes Bankston, who was designated for assignment last week, was claimed off of waivers by the Kansas City Royals. [The Raw Feed]
  
• Raymond and Wool E. Bull show their hip hop moves…If you are into that sort of thing. [Deadspin]
• With the Devil Rays becoming the Rays in 2008, devilrays.com will need to change their domain name. The obvious choice is rays.com but that will not happen as the owners of that domain name, Rays Boathouse in Seattle, is not selling. [Seattle Times]

Summing Up The Red Sox Series In 39 Seconds

It is fitting that Shawn Bleepin’ Camp is featured in a video in which the Devil Rays mascot is being de-pantsed…We also couldn’t help but notice the irony of each mascot’s jersey number. Wally is wearing #97 while Raymond is wearing #00. Those numbers happen to also be the number of runs scored in the series by each team*.

*Only slightly exaggerated.

The Hangover: The New And Improved Casey Fossum?

Devil Rays 6, Orioles 4. We said going into this series that the Rays needed to win two out of three. Anything less and they would be digging themselves a hole that would be difficult to get out of, both in terms of standings and psychologically. After Monday night’s debacle (which still gives us the shakes) up steps Casey Fossum. Casey Fossum? Fossum had his second straight strong performance and did exactly what the team needed. He kept the O’s in check and got to Brian Stokes with a comfortable lead. Stokes did surrender a 3-run home run to the first batter he faced, but settled down to get out of the 8th and Al Reyes is looking like one of the best closers in baseball right now. He is now 5-5 on save opportunities and in those 5 appearances he has thrown 5 innings and given up 1 hit and 1 walk and struck out 7.

• Has anybody noticed that Brendan Harris has started three straight games (Two at shortstop)? He went 2-4 last night batting in the 2-hole and is hitting .444 in limited action. At this point Harris is not far from being the Rays starting shortstop.
• Right now, Akinori Iwamura is the Rays MVP and people are starting to notice. Many thought Daiusuke Matsuzaka would run away with the Rookie-of-the-Year, or maybe it would be the Rays other big rookie Delmon Young. If the vote was today, Aki should win.
• The second installment of Aki’s diary. Hard not to like this guy.
• Another person that is incapable of creating an original thought. We present you The Flock Blog.

Tropicana Field. The ugliest field in the majors

We will go ahead and lay odds at 250:1 that this writer has never even been to the Trop. And even on the off-chance that he has, we guarantee they have not been to every stadium in baseball. If they had, they would surely know that the Trop (especially after the last 2 years worth of renovations) is leaps and bounds better than the Metrodome, Shea Stadium, RFK and Dolphin Stadium.

• A professor at Detroit-Mercy graded every major league team on their game promotions. While two teams received A+ grades, the Devil Rays were one of only three teams to receive an A.
• Devil Rays are a fish and mammals have hair…so what exactly is Raymond? Yeah, we don’t know either.

Rays Index Mentioned In Sports Illustrated

You can imagine our surprise when we opened this weeks Baseball Preview issue of Sports Illustrated and we see the name of our little site right there amidst the Devil Rays preview. But don’t worry, we won’t let it go to our heads. In fact we won’t even write a post about it, nor would we ever permanently display the cover of the issue in the sidebar to the right, and we will definitely not push you to vote in the POLL from sportsillustrated.com that asks “Which blog or fan site has the best Devil Rays info?” in which we are getting our butts kicked by two sites that are clearly cheating. Hey, at least we have received more votes than DevilRaysNews. What? DevilRaysNews hasn’t updated in almost a year? They still have Mark Hendrickson listed on the Rays roster? OK, well at least we aren’t losing to THIS BLOG.

(editors note: we are just kidding about the “cheating”)