tampa-bay-rays Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

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...

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...

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...

Jonny Gomes: I Nearly Asphyxiated A Quarter Of My Team After We Clinched The 2008 AL East
The 2008 Tampa Bay Rays were one of the coolest and most delightful out-of-nowhere success stories in recent baseball history, a team filled with a bevy of teen stars and veteran hitting that coalesced to make an astonishing World Series appearance after having gone 66-96 the season prior. As an ora...

Carloz Gomez Has More Fun Than Anyone
Carlos Gomez is having a rotten season, overall. He’s batting just .220, and his OPS sits at the always alarming .666 mark. The batting average is the worst of his career; the OPS is his lowest mark since 2010. But he does lead the majors in one useful statistic: Gomez and Brandon Nimmo have each be...

Outfielder Carlos Gomez Takes Mound, Pitches Exactly Like Non-Pitcher
The position-player-as-pitcher trend continues piling up numbers at a record pace. Three more position players took the mound Friday night; the total across MLB is now up to 45, by far the most ever for a full season, and it’s still July. One of the recent unfortunate fellows was Rays outfielder Ca...

The Rays Put Their Closer In The Infield And It Worked
Rays closer Sergio Romo played third base on Wednesday, for one batter, to open up the ninth inning of a one-run game. It was something Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash had tried before, and it ended without disaster....
![It Was A Miserable Night For Gary Sanchez [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/ihmqpyutr7w1rczpbpff.jpg)
It Was A Miserable Night For Gary Sanchez [Update]
Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez is not a complete player, but his offensive skills more than make up for for his questionable defense and occasionally suspect effort. There’s a reason he was an all-star last year and rookie of the year runner-up the year before that. His bat is a beast, and the Yankees...

Jake Bauers Scores From Second On Passed Ball Thanks To Just The Sleepiest Yankees Defensive Effort
Jake Bauers socked a three-run dinger in the fifth inning tonight against the Yankees. That’s cool. It’s cool to sock dingers, especially against the abominable Yankees. But Bauers’s best highlight from Monday night came in the bottom of the first inning, when he scored from second base on a passed ...

Carlos Gomez Can't Hit The Ball, But He Can Hit This Water Cooler
Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Carlos Gomez is hitting .197 on the year, and the strikeout he picked up in his first at-bat of today’s game won’t help matters. But at least Gomez is batting 1.000 against stationary water coolers....

Rays, Marlins Inflict 16 Innings Of Rays-Marlins Baseball On A Few Degenerate Fans
In a 16-inning battle between the Rays and the Marlins that started a little after 7 p.m. on July 3 and carried on until 12:42 a.m on July 4, it was a double from Tampa’s Jake Bauers that broke a seemingly never-ending 4-4 deadlock and eventually led the Rays to an exhausting 9-6 victory. It may not...

Sergio Romo Tried To Start Some Shit With The Nationals Over A Stolen Base From Three Weeks Ago
Sergio Romo capped off a shutout win for the Rays over the Nationals this afternoon by striking out Michael Taylor. Rather than quietly saunter back to his dugout, Romo took the opportunity to stunt on Taylor, which stoked the ire of the Nationals. Benches cleared and everyone got to do that basebal...