January 3: The Hall of Fame voting is in:
Vlad Jr & Soto were no-brainers, although I'm a bit surprised Soto was closer to unanimous than Vlad. Guerrero ended his career with 735 HR, 2225 RBI, hit 321/370/553 with 118.4 WAR for his career, was MLB all-time total bases leader with 7050, 3rd in career hits with 4091 (only he, Ty Cobb and Pete Rose have reached 4K hits), 4th in HR, and 2nd in RBI. He spent a season and a half with the Rays, winning his only championship with us in 2033.
Soto of course was no slouch, second in career walks (2446) to Barry Bonds, 10 HR behind Vlad in 5th with 725, 5th all-time in runs scored, and had 136.1 WAR for his career.
Diaz had a fairly short career (12 seasons) and was done at 34, but was the most dominant lefty in his years with Texas, winning the 2029 AL Cy Young and finishing with a 165-96, 3.53 career mark and was a workhorse in his heyday with consecutive seasons of 251 and 249 IP. He jumped from 60% the year before, but two other players in a similar boat - Shohei Ohtani and Rafael Devers - saw their support plateau.
Finally from a Rays perspective, Christian Little got on the ballot this year and came through with an impressive 61.6% showing, hopefully he'll follow Diaz's path as he was one of the great strikeout pitchers of all-time.
January 16: We made a free agent signing! Japanese import SS Yuji Morioka was signed to a minor league deal but it's worth $5M if he's called up. Here are his particulars:
He's an above-average rated fielder and he has serious power, probably a 30-35 HR guy if he played every day. Incumbent backup infielder Chris Fox has turned out to be a disappointment - after he was acquired from Toronto last winter he looked like a future batting champion with a 70 contact rating but that has since been downgraded to 55. He also turned out to be a terrible fielder, with a -4.7 ZR at 2B in 80 games at the position and even worse at SS, so despite hitting .270 over 326 ABs he was only worth 0.5 WAR. Sounds like a position in need of an upgrade, and we'll attempt to deal Fox even though he's younger and cheaper.
And here's our Chris Fox trade:
O'Brien had a great rookie year with the Royals, earning 1.9 WAR for those numbers shown above. He's most likely a reliever, but still has the possibility to start if he can develop his changeup (and is ranked the #28 prospect). The details:
I did get a message that the clubhouse was disappointed to see Fox go, though. Moore, the other guy we got in the deal, is a good-fielding middle infielder with a questionable bat although he did hit .304 in AA last year.
January 18: Old friend Vinny Willard, who has become a vagabond of late, signed a minor league deal with Toronto.
February 23: Twice-former Ray Johnny Soland inked a 1/4.7 pact with Milwaukee.
February 25: We made another free agent signing, veteran righty Josh Grote:
The price was right ($1.6M) and Grote can be considered an innings-eater. He had a bit of an off-year last season due to a spike in his HR rate but otherwise is a solid 4th/5th starter, and if it doesn't work it out it's only $1.6M. A motivating factor in this signing is that Joel Gird's stuff, already borderline, was downgraded to 45 and despite good control we're not that good of a defensive team to survive that. He's out of options so I'll likely be dealing him somewhere for something.
February 27: Traded 27-year old RHP Joel Gird, 29-year old minor league LHP Jose Morales, and 22-year old minor league C Dan Jackson to the Oakland Athletics, getting 23-year old minor league RHP Tim James in return.
And there goes Gird, along with Jose Morales who was also out of options. In return we get a very intriguing dude in James who has 80 stuff and I mean *80* stuff based on what he did in High-A ball last year:
Yes, that's 141 Ks in 73 innings and 3.4 WAR. You'll see it was accompanied by 33 walks and his control is rated 35 without much potential to improve, so that will always be an issue. But if you can strike out two guys an inning, a walk or two mixed in isn't going to be too damaging. We'll start him at AA this year and see how it goes. Otherwise Jackson was a "make it work" guy, a marginal catching prospect.
March 4: The Astros signed one of our free agents, Mike Robichaux, to a 2/23.4 deal. Good luck with that I say - Robichaux was acquired to be our Satoshi Sato replacement when the lefty went down with an injury for most of the season, ended up getting hurt himself and wasn't that effective when healthy. And his control was downgraded to 40.
March 5: Old friend and all-time team saves leader Kikuo Kawase is still kicking around at 39 and signed a 1/2.2 deal with the Cubs.
March 6: My scout came in with a new report on the rehabbing Greg Bookhart, my biggest concern coming into the season after suffering a torn labrum during last year's playoffs. There was a downgrade as feared, but not too bad - down from 65 to 60 stuff and 75 to 70 movement. He's still rated as a top starter, though, and hopefully those ratings don't deteriorate any further. He won't start pitching until late this month so he'll probably miss the first couple weeks of the season as he builds up.
March 8: It took awhile but Jon Harbour finally hit it big. The Rays' swingman for the past seven years finally is getting paid as a starter, going to Milwaukee on a 4/56.8 deal.
March 11: Major news!
You didn't think we'd just let Luis Barela walk after potentially 5 straight MVP awards? Nope. This is the biggest deal in club history in terms of AAV, with Barela getting $37.6M over the next four seasons (the fourth is a player option). Dan Gregory's $24.2M/year deal comes off the books after this year and with Alex Duran in the fold we'll likely move Doug Johns and his potential $20M+ salary in arbitration next year. But it's really tough to find an elite 3B and Barela is coming off the best defensive numbers of his career last season (a + zone rating) so there's little doubt he can stay at the hot corner.
Also today a couple of former Rays catchers in the twilight of their careers signed minor league deals: Will Quintana with Milwaukee and Mike McKee with Pittsburgh. For McKee it's come full circle as he was a Pirate draftee before being acquired by us as a minor leaguer.
March 16: Despite only hitting .270 and only earning 1.3 WAR in his first season with Toronto, former Rays standout 3B Josh Beckett inked a 5/120 extension with the Jays.