Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Rays Roster Speculations

Cork Gaines aka "The Professor" over at Rays Index has put up his projected 40-man roster for the Rays. Why should we care? Because if Cork has guessed right then we are very likely to see most of the players on the 40-man, but not on the 25-man, in Durham in 2010. In addition, in his footnotes he provides an explanation of “options”, surely one of the most confusing terms in baseball.

Interesting to note how many of the players on both 25 and 40 man rosters are former or current Bulls.

Of importance to Bulls fans is that Elliot Johnson, Mitch Talbot, and Chris Richard are listed as being “out of options.” (So why is Mitch pitching in the Arizona Fall League, you ask? Got me.) That won’t keep them from playing for the Bulls next year (ask Elliot and Chris on Wednesday night), but it does mean a good bit of negotiating is at hand for them before we know.

Another feature of the tables is the estimated salaries.

Worth taking a look at.

7 comments:

  1. Fascinating; Jaso is on the 40-man. Good Lord!

    Dave

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  2. Jaso was on 40-man all last year. In fact, until they pushed Michel Hernandez off the ledge near the end of the season, the Rays had 6 catchers on the 40-man. And not one of them much good (well, maybe Zaun), unless the guy Jose Lobaton who was down in Montgomery is something special. Catching is clearly one of the Rays biggest problems. We can only hope that some of it gets sorted out over the winter. I'm betting on Jaso and Hernandez in Durham next year; Riggans getting dumped. But, as you can see in the chart, they are going to have to pay a lot for the best catcher they've got (Zaun) and he's 40 years old!

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  3. you bring up a good point about Talbot. Maybe they want to see if he can be an option for the Rays in the bullpen. But in his only appearance in Arizona, he started. More likely they are showcasing him for a trade.

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  4. It looks like Richard won't be on the roster next year... too bad, he will be missed.

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  5. No reason why he couldn't be on a minor league contract with the Bulls. That was his status before he was called up. Or do you have some more information?

    Of course, he would have to agree and could go shopping around for a better deal.

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  6. Just did some surfing around and now see that Chris has been "outrighted". So ball is in his court, assuming the Rays make an offer of a minor league contract.

    Trivia: Chris made more money in his one month with Tampa than he did the entire season with the Bulls. Something not right about that.

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  7. I will have to track it down, but when I first saw the news that he had been "outrighted", it said the Rays expected him to choose free agency.

    Of course, since I don't remember the source off the top of my head, it might not be reliable.

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