The GBT - The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
RAYS 5, Orioles 2 (boxscore)
THE GOOD: Evan Longoria is good at baseball. It’s a bit sad that we finally get peak Longo and it comes in a season in which the Rays are probably going to lose 95 games. On Sunday, it was his second 2-home run game in a week and now he has 21 home runs on the season, matching his total from last year and just one behind his 2014 total. He is now on pace to hit 37 home runs, which would be a career high and 40 seems like it is in reach as he is heating up a bit. What is interesting is that we are really starting to see a transformation in Longoria. He told us before the season that he spent the offseason working on power more than previous years and while many players talk about changing things in the offseason, it really seems to be paying off for Longoria. It is also interesting to see Longo take this approach to becoming a more productive offensive weapon. When Longoria was younger he had some great OPS seasons, but it was more of a combination of decent power and really good OBPs. The last two seasons Longoria had the two worst OPS seasons of his career. This year his OPS is back up, not quite to where it was early in his career, but still a huge improvement over the last two years, and it is almost entirely due to the power. That is, Longoria hasn’t made a serious attempt to start getting on base as often as he used to. Instead he decided to just become a slugger. I don’t know if that is a bad thing. It is certainly better than what he had been doing in recent years. It is just a different Longoria we have never seen before. And boy does the new Longo come with some serious pop. Here is his second home run on Sunday. ESPN says this would have only traveled 450 feet, just the fourth longest home run at The Trop this season by a Rays player, which is complete horse doo-doo. I’m not going to say 500 feet, but this was at least 460-470.
THE BAD: Speaking of sluggers, what happened to Corey Dickerson? In his last 24 games, he has been getting on base at a decent clip. He has 21 hits and 8 walks in that stretch. But he has just one home run in the past month. He is still on pace to hit 22-23 home runs, but at one point he was on pace to hit 32-33. At this point, 22 home runs is going to feel like a disappointment and that’s if he can even get there. Over the weekend he went 1-12 against the Orioles.
THE TELLING: The Rays activated Kevin Kiermaier from the DL. The Rays also promoted catcher Luke Maile to replace the demoted Hank Conger, signed Kevin Jepsen, and demoted Ryan Garton and Tyler Sturdevant…Steve Pearce started a rehab assignment with Charlotte on Sunday. Brad Boxberger and Chase Whitley will start their rehab assignments with Charlotte today…[Durham 8, Syracuse 4] JP Arencibia hit 2 home runs, his 8th or 9th of the season. He also had a double and drove in four.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- Martin Fennelly wrote about the struggles of Chris Archer. [TampaBay.com]
- Marc Topkin looks back at the trades made by Matt Silverman. [TampaBay.com]
- Justin Marks threw a no-hitter on Saturday for the Durham Bulls. Marks, who has one appearance in the big leagues (2014 with the Royals) is 28, which probably explains why he was allowed to throw 130 pitches. Prospects don’t get that luxury. [MiLB]
- I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this graphic, but according to this, it costs $500 to propose at a Rays game, one of the most expensive in MLB. Of course, nobody should be proposing at an MLB game unless the proposee has specifically said that’s what they want. And even then, don’t. [Swimmingly]
(0)Dislikes
(0)
3 Comments
Bauers may end up being the difference one day, but that Souza-Myers-Turner trade looks really bad at this point. Imagine what an upgrade in the lineup Myers would be over Logan Morrison at 1B (if the Rays would have moved Myers like the Padres did). Two .280+ hitters with 30+ HR, 100 RBI talent in Longo and Myers?? That's a middle-of-the-order pair the Rays haven't seen since Pena's glory days.
Ya.....it makes ZERO sense no matter how you slice it...epic fall
I think the Myers portion of the trade was great. Trea Turner would have solved the Shortstop problem for years to come, Ross would be great in the rotation and the Rays would have had 6 years of control over both. On top of that Bauers is a solid prospect. What hurt was trading Turner and Ross for Souza.
What surprised me about Topkin's article is that of all the trades Silverman has made it is difficult to definitively grade most of them at this point.