tampabayrays Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Miami Marlins Sorry For Blaming Tampa Bay Rays For Killing Steve Irwin
A spokesman for the Miami Marlins apologized today for a bit of spicy Twitter banter in which the Marlins’ account blamed the Tampa Bay Rays for Steve Irwin’s death, Miami radio host Andy Slater reported....
Rays Put Pitcher At First Base, Nearly Destroy The Tender Fabrics That Hold Together The Game Of Baseball
A crucial AL East game between the Rays and the Red Sox ground to a screeching halt in the eighth inning on Wednesday afternoon after the Rays pulled some lineup shenanigans with their relief pitchers. Lefty Adam Kolarek got the first out in the inning, at which point the Rays brought in right-hande...
Benches Clear In Rays-Yankees Over Grown Men Arguing About Not Talking To Each Other
The benches cleared briefly in the middle of the sixth inning of Tuesday night’s Rays-Yankees tilt in New York. No one was plunked or brushed back; there were no dirty slides; no catchers were trucked at the plate. Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia struck out Rays outfielder Avisail Garcia on a, hmm, cr...
In Miracle, Orioles Somehow Manage To Avoid Falling Victim To Perfect Game
The Orioles are in the midst of a historically bad season with many lowlights that will likely be used in hospitals all over the country to help patients induce vomiting. But to those cursed with supporting this team, I bring good news. Baltimore showed on Sunday that the depths of their awfulness d...
The Madman Theory Of The Montreal/Tampa Bay Rays
Any self-respecting student of insane Machiavellian gambits should be familiar with the Madman Theory, Richard Nixon’s self-invented strategy for winning the war in Vietnam. The theory, as recounted by Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman after he got out of jail for his role in Watergate, went like t...
Rays Suggest Playing Half Their Home Games In Montreal: Seriously, What The Hell?
Given all of the problems with the Rays—and there are many—dire situations call for nontraditional thinking. Like hanging out with your friends and smoking a ton of weed and wondering aloud Dude. What if a team could play in two cities? That is probably not how this proposed solution to the Rays’ at...
Twins Broadcaster Bert Blyleven Calls For The Destruction Of Tropicana Field After The Park Stole Another Homer From Miguel Sano
While the Rays were unable to stop the red-hot Twins from getting a win on Friday, at least Tropicana Field was once again victorious over Minnesota third baseman Miguel Sano....
The Rays Drew Their Smallest Crowd Ever
It’s old hat by now to say the Rays have attendance issues. The stadium’s bad. The location’s bad. Ownership is bad. The region itself might be bad. (Neil deMause ran down each of the theories in turn.) We know all this already. But it’s still news when an MLB team draws under 6,000 people, and ther...
Avisaíl García Had Just The Absolute Dumbest Inside-The-Park Dinger
Avisaíl García, the disorienting ceiling at the Trop, and the atrocious eyesight of Randal Grichuk all combined to give the Rays’ DH an atypical, embarrassing, inside-the-park dong during the Toronto-Tampa game on Tuesday night. In the third inning, facing Clayton Richard, García hit a high fly int...
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 ...
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...
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...