Defensive Indifference

An enthralling bench-clearing brawl in Boston this evening—which I’m sure will be all over Sportscenter tonight—saw Coco Crisp get plunked by James Shields, the former charge the mound and dodge a Shields haymaker (despite how the above picture appears, Shields totally whiffed), connect a left to Shields’ lower neck-shoulder area, get jumped by Dioner Navarro, […]

And a lot more from Troy Percival and others from that upstart club in Tampa Bay in this piece over at AOL. There’s some intangibles stuff, but a lot of statistical analysis too if that’s your thing. And yes, I think the Rays are for real. On top of that I think the AL […]

When third base prospect Evan Longoria was sent down to AAA Durham to start the season, a popular interpretation was that the Rays were simply trying to delay starting Longoria’s abritration clock so as to save money in the long term at the (possible) expense of performance in the short term.
Following Willy Aybar’s injury about […]

Rays pitcher Al Reyes had a pretty rough night last night. Courtesy of the AP:
TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Al Reyes was shocked with a stun gun and arrested early Friday after police say he fell against a ceramic pot in a bar, got up and picked a fight with a […]

It was only a matter of time until everyone’s favorite blubbering idiot jumped into the ongoing Yankees-Rays spring training brouhaha. Mr. Hankie had this laughable suggestion for all you mid- to small-market to not-completely-money-engorged franchises out there:
“I don’t want these teams in general to forget who subsidizes a lot of them, and it’s the […]

Two young up and coming MLBers finalized long-term extensions today, with the Rockies signing Troy Tulowitzki to a 6 year, 31 million dollar deal, and the (Devil) Rays signing James Shields to a 4 year 11.25 million dollar extension. This seems to be part of a recent trend in baseball where teams are locking up […]