Some former Rays retirements of note: Danny Romero, who won the 2038 Cy Young with us, hung it up as did former star 1B Jon Jimenez who went unsigned last year coming off a 38-homer season in 2045 and figured enough was enough. Also hanging up the cleats were Jeff Baez, who was our starting SS for 7 years and won a Gold Glove with us in 2039 as well as Mike Barkley, our closer for a season, and Rayhmer Costa, who always intrigued me with his 70 stuff and control combined with his 25 movement which kept him from being more than a run-of-the-mill middle reliever.
Got several deals in the works but waiting on free agents to declare so I can open up some 40-man spots. I've decided to keep Minier and Sato and hope that they bounce back to dominant form; they weren't terrible last year but they weren't consistent.
Awards season:
We didn't win any Gold Gloves. I voted for Morioka at 2B but former Rays farmhand Art Rivers won it for Oakland.
Silver Sluggers: We won at 3B (Barela), LF (Sato), RF (Johns) and DH (Castillo). I also voted for Dave Frick at SS but the electorate liked Kevin Kane's 43 homers more although Frick was better than him 145-131 in wRC+.
Congrats to our Rookie of the Year:
Of course we had the usual "should a professional who played in Japan and who is 31 win RotY?" controversy but it wasn't much of one for the voters. Arizona's Greg Barrett won the NL award with an impressive .308-28-95 maiden season.
And add another Ray to our long list of Cy Young winners:
He wasn't a slam dunk winner but took the award by a decisive-enough margin both in first-place votes and total points. Ager becomes the 12th different Ray to win the award and first since Jim Brophy in 2043. The NL winner was the unheralded Ruben Roncancio of Cincinnati who went 16-7, 2.39 leading the league in wins and MLB in ERA although he only fanned 129 in 195 IP.
The AL MVP went to Chicago's Joel Taylor (.306-46-117, with a league-best 7.4 WAR) as it probably should have, although I voted for our own Mario Saro, who finished third with 4 first-place votes behind the Yankees' Nelson Gamez, who had 57 HR and 135 RBI this year. Down ballot Doug Johns finished 6th, reigning 4-time winner Luis Barela 8th, and Dave Frick 9th. Over in the NL the no-brainer (and unanimous) winner was Cincinnati's Steve Hopfensperger, who was .318-55-126, had an OBP of .440 and accumulated 10.1 WAR.
OK, now time for a couple of trades:
Perez has great stuff, 60 as a starter and 70 as a reliever, but has only 40 movement and 45 control and was a pending MiLB free agent who didn't want a MiLB extension and therefore would have had to have been added to the 40-man. He did generate a fair amount of interest from other teams and we sent him to the Jays for Riley, his polar opposite:
In years past I would have avoided this pitcher profile like the plague, but after seeing how well we did with Jim Brophy last year (who didn't have this kind of movement or control) I'm confident the 70-rated duo of Morioka and Frick will make him look good. Those ratings above are as a starter, he's at 45 stuff as reliever. Not sure yet whether he starts or relieves but if it's the latter he'll be our long man. He was worth 1.0 WAR in 38 innings in relief last year for Toronto after being called up in August.
And another deal, which my assistant GM hated:
Yes he hated it even though Forbes has had a combined -0.1 WAR over the last two seasons and is recovering from shoulder inflammation and in return we're getting Gray, who finished third in the NL Reliever of the Year voting last year, had an MLB-high 47 saves, was worth 1.9 WAR and is signed for the next two years at $1.78M per year. This enables me to add an insurance policy in case Sato and Minier remain inconsistent and gives us a closer for 2048 when Minier is a free agent and I'm probably not going to pay Sato $15M in his last year of arbitration.
November 23: Dan Gregory declined our qualifying offer. I'm going to wait and see how he does in free agency as I'd still like to bring him back on a 1 or 2-year deal; otherwise I'm going to have to find a CF. Same thing applies to Tony Cordova, whom I non-tendered at C, I'd be glad to sign him as a backup if the price is right.
UPDATE: Gregory has gone from "fragile" to "wrecked" which seems about right but wants $30M/year, and Cordova wants $21M/year. Hah!