The GBT - The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
RAYS 2, Twins 1 (boxscore)
THE GOOD: The Rays and Twins have Spring Training complexes that are close to each other so they tend to play each other a lot in the Spring. That’s good for the Rays and not so good for the Twins. This year the Twins are 9-6 against teams not named the Rays and 9-11 overall…Matt Andriese had a strong outing and looks good heading to what is almost certainly a spot in the rotation to start the season. He struck out 6 and walked 1 in 5 scoreless innings.
THE BAD: The offense continues to sputter. Rene Rivera hit a home run. That was nice. Desmond Jennings had 2 hits. That was nice. But the other starters went a combined 1-20.
THE TELLING: Today’s game will be broadcast on Sun Sports. There will also be a 30-minute preseason special on Sun Sports today at 4pm…Jake Odorizzi and Rocco Baldelli will be guests on this week’s edition of the Hot Stove radio show, airing on WDAE 620 AM at 7 p.m…Alex Colome threw a bullpen session yesterday and will throw again on Saturday. Drew Smyly will throw another bullpen session today. Matt Moore and Jake McGee are both throwing bullpen sessions tomorrow.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- Kevin Cash says he is going to use Kevin Jepsen in “plenty of game-on-the-line, high-leveraged situations.” [MLB.com]
- Logan Forsythe will be the main second baseman to start the season. He is excited for the opportunity. [TampaBay.com]
- St. Pete mayor is going to make a new proposal that will guarantee the city of St. Pete receives 100% of proceeds from the redevelopment of the land The Trop sits on. [TBO.com]
- The Dodgers are obviously in a different class, but this can’t be a good sign for the Rays’ next TV deal. Is the bubble bursting? [NYPost.com]
- Updated PECOTA projection has the Rays winning 85 games, about one game behind the Red Sox, and making the playoffs in 54.1% of simulations. [BPro]
- The Rays have been a decent investment for Stuart Sternberg. But that’s nothing compared to the investment the Steinbrenners made in the Yankees. [BI Sports]
(0)Dislikes
(0)
4 Comments
I want to live in an America where a 500% return in asset value 12 years is considered merely "decent". Sign me up.
Here is what Sternberg has done in more earthly terms: He bought a house for $500K (probably borrowed a decent amount of that), put in $100K to fix it up (real money spent), rented it out to cover his mortgage and still made 10% ($50K a year) and now the house 12 years later is worth $2.5M.
The Steinbrenners would have lost 40% of that Yankee valuation gain to estate taxes except George "convienently" died in the one year in which Congress had not renewed the estate tax. Knowing George, he probably pulled the plug on himself knowing it made his kids and his team $1 billion to die before 12/31 of that year.
Darn you, Stu. Get off my lawn!!!
54% chance at the playoffs is higher than I would've expected. I assume it has to do, in part, with weak pitching in the division... can't wait for 4/6!
If the Rays can stay above .500 while waiting for Cobb and Smyly to get well (May 1-ish) they should be in good shape. The problem is April is basically "all AL East month" with 18 of 21 games coming against division rivals, so each of those games is more like 2 in the standings... with any luck Smyly will only miss 1 start and Cobber 2.
Tough break for Franklin.