rays Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Rich Hill, On The Shift: "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Goddammit! Fuck!"
With two down in the bottom of the first inning of Wednesday night’s Dodgers-Rays game, Rays first baseman Ji-man Choi leaned over and bunted a first-pitch fastball from Dodgers starter Rich Hill up the third baseline for a single. This worked because the Dodgers had shifted their infield to the rig...
Avisail Garcia Smashed A Dinger Halfway To The Moon That Should Have Counted For Two Runs
Rays manager Kevin Cash sent in Avisail Garcia to pinch hit for Austin Meadows in the seventh inning with the hope that the switch would jumpstart his team’s offense to mount a comeback against the Orioles—Tampa Bay was down 4-2 at the time. Garcia struck out swinging in his first at-bat so Cash’s p...
Good Lord, This Jose Alvarado Pitch Is Nasty
Jose Alvarado is just beginning his third year pitching out of the Rays’ bullpen, and all you really need to know about him is that his fastball is absolutely obscene. Here’s a 99 mph pitch from his appearance today against the Rockies—a pitch that let him finish striking out the side—which somehow ...
The Ja Morant Show Is Over—For Now
Ja Morant had an absurd season. He averaged around 24 points, 6 boards and 10 assists a game. ...
Ja Morant Is For Real
When a great player’s hype is dependent on masochists who regularly subject themselves to Ohio Valley Conference basketball, it’s not often that they actually shine on the national stage that March Madness provides. But Ja Morant showed up against fifth-seeded Marquette ready to make a splash with v...
Rays Bravely Decide To Pay Blake Snell More Than The League Minimum
Less than two weeks after Blake Snell made it known how miffed he was that his team would pay him only barely more than the league minimum the year after he won the Cy Young, the Rays pitcher has signed a much richer five-year extension with the club. He’ll get paid about eight times the $573,700 th...
Murray State Vs. Marquette Should Be Sick As Hell
Thank goodness Murray State made it into the NCAA Tournament, because before last Saturday it seemed worryingly possible that Ja Morant and his Racers might be hanging out in the NIT this postseason. But after finishing as OVC regular-season co-champions with Belmont and then winning their conferenc...
Blake Snell Wants You To Know That The Rays Are Actively Choosing To Underpay Him
Last season Blake Snell was voted into the first All-Star Game of his career, led the majors in wins, ERA and ERA+, and won the AL Cy Young Award. For his efforts and historically great performance, the Tampa Bay Rays rewarded him with a $15,500 pay increase, $10,000 of which came from a league-wide...
Ja Morant And Murray State Are Headed To The NCAA Tournament
The Murray State Racers became the first team to punch their ticket to the national tournament on Saturday thanks to the do-it-all efforts of Ja Morant—a player who, unlike in January, you might have heard of by now. The eighth-leading scorer in the nation dropped 36 points, grabbed seven boards and...
Tiny Baseball Fella Demonstrates Advanced, Noggin-Based Fielding Technique
Yes, sure, the simplest way to catch and field a baseball is to stick a glove in its path and squeeze at the moment of impact. But that method is decidedly less fun than the one put on display by this little tyke that Rays pitcher Shane McClanahan met at spring training:...
What’s The Matter With Tampa Bay?
It’s not like everyone hadn’t been thinking it, but it took Tommy Pham to mention the elephant in the room. The outfielder, who one year earlier had celebrated his 6-WAR season in his first year as a starter at age 29 by publicly tearing down Cardinals management for not calling him up sooner, was s...
Cashless Stadiums Are The Next Frontier In Fan Exploitation
The Tampa Bay Rays announced today that they would become the first major American sports team to stop accepting cash at their stadium, forcing fans to either pay via credit card or something called a “Rays card.” This shift is roughly coterminous with their recent decision to eliminate 5,000 of the...
Ja Morant Is The Coolest NBA Prospect You're Never Going To Watch
Murray State blew out Eastern Illinois on Thursday, 83-61, and improved to a 5-0 start to Ohio Valley Conference play in the process. And while I am 99.9 percent sure that virtually all living sports fans could not possibly care less about that result, I am equally confident that you will love watch...
Rays Announce They're Getting Rid Of Their Cheapest Seats
The Tampa Bay Rays’ attendance issues are well-documented. So that’s likely to be the most prominent framing for stories about the team’s announcement today of an offseason stadium renovation that will reduce seating capacity by more than 5,000. And, sure, that’s embarrassing, but Rays ownership wou...
Tommy Pham Says The Rays Have "Really No Fan Base At All"
Talks with area officials on a potential new stadium fell apart earlier this month, so the Rays are back in their generation-long limbo. Perhaps matters in Oakland are more pressing for MLB, but eventually, something’s going to have to give here—and as Rays outfielder Tommy Pham so brutally but accu...
Jacob DeGrom Won The NL Cy Young And It Wasn't Even Close
Playing for the Mets didn’t impede Jacob deGrom’s NL Cy Young chances in the slightest. Despite only putting up a 10-9 record due to his hitters giving him some of the worst run support in the league, the Mets ace wasn’t penalized for his lack of wins, and he blew away Max Scherzer in the voting. De...
The Horror Of Tony Saunders's Arm Break
Welcome back to Sports Horror stories, a video series where we remember that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is, in a way, constantly happening all around us....
CC Sabathia Plunks Batter, Costs Himself $500K, Tells Rays Dugout "That's For You...Bitch"
This afternoon’s Yankees-Rays game in Tampa got out of hand early—it’s 11-1 right now—but the beef never sleeps. In the fifth, CC Sabathia hit Jake Bauers in the wrist. In the sixth, Andrew Kittredge threw up and behind Austin Romine, who exchanged words with catcher Jesus Sucre....
Jake Faria Averts Disaster With Miraculous Catch Of 109-MPH Aaron Judge Comebacker
Comebackers are some of the scariest events in sports. A comebacker fractured Juan Nicasio’s skull and broke his neck in 2011; a comebacker broke Mike Mussina’s nose in 1998 and for a while poisoned him with the fear that every pitch was going to come rocketing back at his face; last season a Joe Ma...
Kolten Wong, A Good Big Brother, Says The Rays Are "A Bad Organization" For Overlooking His Younger Brother
Kean Wong is a 23-year-old utility fielder in the Rays organization. He’s spent this summer playing in Triple-A Durham, where he’s batting .282 with a .750 OPS. Tuesday he and his Durham pals will play the Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate in the Triple-A Championship Game. While this will be terribly e...