Blalock is a Ray

Boras newsbreaker Jon Heyman tells us on Twitter the minor league deal is for $925,000 with another $350,000 in incentives. My guess is that there is a promise date in the clause that if he’s not up by a certain date, the Rays will trade him, much like Adam Kennedy last year. Welcome aboard Hank.

Tags: Hank Blalock

Rays Promotions Honored

Maury Brown runs The Biz of Baseball site – a must read if you are interested in the business side of baseball. Today, he reviewed the different promotions that are planned for major league ballparks in the 2010 season and he decided the Rays have the best series of promotions for the 2010 season. Some of his favorites include:

• Zorilla Gorilla Webkinz night on April 25th
• Flying Carl Crawford action figure, equipped with a parachute on May 2nd
• Growth chart featuring 6′9″ Jeff Niemann on August 1st. Finally a growth chart I can fit on
• Joe Maddon Glasses night – First 10,000 fans for the 2nd game of the season on 4/7 get a pair Maddon spectacles
• Super Cowbell night – the first 10,000 fans at the third game get a larger cowbell to further annoy Yankees and Red Sox fans with when they come to town

His favorite, and mine too, is this beauty that will be given out on May 30th against the White Sox. A Carlos Pena toothbrush holder! I am going to this game to get one for my kids.

Check out the rest of the article to see the other great promotions going on at other parks in 2010 including Star Wars night in LA and Sausage Bobblehead night in Milwaukee and continue to check back into Maury’s terrific blog throughout the season and/or follow him on Twitter at @BizballMaury.

Tags: Carlos Pena, promotions

Nine Innings with Grant Balfour

Jesse Spector sat down with Grant Balfour for Spector’s latest installment of Nine Innings at his informative Touching Base blog.

Tags: Grant Balfour

Rays Close On Blalock?

Marc Topkin tells us the Rays are close to inking Hank Blalock to a minor league deal and I have already heard some rumblings that the ink is drying. Either way, I love the fact that it is a minor league deal so the risk is very low for the Rays. You might recall the Rays brought in Adam Kennedy in this manner last off-season only to move him to Oakland two days before Akinori Iwamura was injured and Kennedy went on to have a rather successful 2009 season. While the club already has Dan Johnson around as Carlos Pena insurance, Blalock gives them another option and one with more major league experience.  Given that Blalock is a Scott Boras client, we will wait for Jon Heyman to give us the official news on Twitter. If this was a major league deal, I might be more critical of it because Blalock certainly has his faults (third base defense, hitting LHP, injuries) but those risks are mitigated with a minor league deal.

Tags: Hank Blalock

Around the Dock – March 6th

Yesterday, the Rays drum the Yankees and today, a walk-off home run from Justin Ruggiano knocks off the Red Sox. Combine those two events with the great time I had with my son on a train ride today and it has been a terrific weekend so far. With games starting this week, there has been a lot of news and happenings with the Rays:

• Sean Rodriguez is off to an early start for Grapefruit League MVP. Until Ben Zobrist homered earlier today against Boston, Rodriguez was the only Rays player to have a homer this spring. He has hit three and just missed hitting a fourth homer in his attempt for the cycle against the Yankees. Maddon inexplicably pulled Rodriguez before his fourth at bat so. Given the fact Rodriguez is in a dogfight for a final roster spot, he is certainly starting things off on the right foot. That said, Ido not think Rodriguez’s power display has been the most impressive thing this spring so far.
• Jeremy Hellickson debuts. If you missed yesterday’s game on MLB Network or MLB.TV, Hellickson came in after Price had burned up his pitch allotment in 1.2 innings. Hellickson did not even get the final out of the inning as baseball player turned actor Nick Swisher looked like an actor on the basepaths and Navarro was able to pick him off first base. In the second inning, Hellickson gave up what should have been a double to Francisco Cervelli that Sean Rodriguez played into a triple with a statue of liberty type play when he threw a ghost ball into the infield before realizing he did not have the ball. That gave the Yankees a runner on third with nobody out with Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson, and Mark Teixeira coming to the plate.  Hellickson starts off against his boyhood idol in Jeter and makes him look silly on a third strike curveball and then gets Granderson to bounce back to the the pitcher. He goes 3-0 on Teixeira and then comes back to throw three straight strikes and gets Teixeira to strike out swinging. Over the past three seasons, Teixeira has hit .370/.799/.739 when up 3-0 on a pitcher and hit .328/.483/.628 hitting with a runner in scoring position with two outs and Hellickson sent him back to the dugout empty handed. That is how you announce your presence with authority Nuke Laloosh!
• Justin Ruggiano hits a walk-off homer. The only reason this means anything to Rays fans, well besides the fact it beat the Red Sox today, is that Ruggiano became a Jaime Cevallos disciple last season. If that name does not ring a bell for you, he is the swing coach that helped transform Ben Zobrist into what he has become which makes Ruggiano a curiosity in 2010 for me because he already had decent raw power.
• Pat Burrell wants to play more in the outfield (Topkin – St. Pete Times) Pat the Bat playing the outfield would not be the worst thing for the Rays – that honor would be reserved for Andy Sonnanstine throwing a pitch for the Rays this year. Sonnanstine had a rough start to his spring training today failing to get out of the first inning. Sonnanstine simply lacks the stuff and upside of the other arms in this organization and 2008 is looking like a very distant memory for him.
• Rays offer Cuban first baseman (DRaysBay) The club has also offered Hank Blalock a minor league contract but adding Jose Julio Ruiz would give the Rays a future first baseman should 2010 be Carlos Pena’s last year in Tampa Bay.
• Team President Matt Silverman is competitive year-round (@jonahkeri on Twitter). Silverman attended the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference as a speaker and took down the Red Sox jersey that was behind him on the platform when he went up to speak. Bravo, good sir, bravo!

Tags: Jeremy Hellickson, Justin Ruggiano, Matt Silverman, Pat Burrell, Sean Rodriguez

Rocco Baldelli Serving as Special Assistant for Rays

Former Rays fan favorite Rocco Baldelli will serve as a special assistant helping coach base running and outfield defense. Baldelli encountered early success in his 2003 rookie campaign as he batted .289/11/78/27 for the Rays, However injuries plagued him most of his career hindering him from making a substantial impact in the majors. The Rays bring in Baldelli as a great clubhouse personality and someone who can preach a good work ethic to the young Rays players. Rocco has been sidelined with a shoulder injury and he is not ruling out a potential return to baseball in the future. Baldelli is 28 years old and can offer the Rays a veteran bat and solid defensive play if he decides to return sometime during this season.

[Jason] I am happy because Rocco is one of my all-time favorite Rays players. Here is a pic of he and I at the Rays Caravan when it came to Orlando in 2007.

Tags: Rocco Baldelli

Friedman #1!

Sports Illustrated has ranked the GM’s from 1 to 30 and the Rays’ own Andrew Friedman was chosen as the best GM in baseball.

For as much praise as the Rays have received over the last few years, they’ve probably deserved even more. Over the last three years they’ve spent just a million dollars per marginal win, the sort of thing that gets baseball wonks to draw hearts around pictures of Friedman. Maybe the best example of their method is the preposterous contract to which they signed Evan Longoria during his first days as a major leaguer — if the Rays exercise all the options in the contract, they could end up paying him less than $50 million through his age 30 season, which makes him the single most valuable commodity in baseball. Friedman has also won a pennant and maintains one of the game’s best farm systems. It may seem absurd to say of a 32-year-old whom few people had heard of a year and a half ago, but he and his braintrust are the best in baseball.

Not surprisingly, Theo Epstein and Brian Cashman came right behind him in the rankings.

Tags: Andrew Friedman

Radio Appearance Update

DockoftheRays.com will be on the Out of Bounds Sports Show on AM 1490 which airs in the Tampa Bay area market each Wednesday night at 6:20 ET throughout the 2010 baseball season. You can tune in online by clicking on the show’s logo above.

Tags: radio

Goldstein Ranks 7 Rays in Top 101

Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus put out his Top 101 list today and the Rays are well represented with seven names in the top 66 of the list. Goldstein is one of the best in the business when it comes to ranking prospects as he has been doing it for a long time first as an independent blogger (where I first found him) and then onto Baseball America before landing at BP.

Tags: prospects

UZR, FIP, wOBA, tERA

Does the above subject line look like an eye chart to you? If so, you should check out two recently launched free resources for those interested in learning more about sabermetrics.

Saberlibrary.com is a site that you will see us link to often here to help explain some of the metrics we use in our writing.

They have also posted a free online course that can give you a sabermetrics crash course in 90 minutes so that UZR, FIP, wOBA, and the like become more than just acronyms to you when you are reading baseball analysis.

If you want even more information to read about sabermetrics, I highly recommend this book.

Tags: sabermetrics