Johnson & Ruggiano Get Some Attention

Joe Smith of the St. Petersburg Times thinks that Elliot Johnson has a shot with the Rays this year, especially with the departure of Jason Bartlett. Couple of good quotes from manager Charlie Montoyo and from Elliot himself.|St Pete Times|

Bill Chastain at MLB.com looks over Justin Ruggiano and notes that there could easily be a place for him in the Rays outfield.|MLB.com|

Meanwhile, Nicole Johnson sounds like a lot of the rest of us in January — stop shopping and try to save money. |Life of the Baseball Wife|

How To Make a Baseball

In our continuing efforts to make it through the winter, accumulating trivial information helps. In this case, although I knew the critical parts of a baseball, I don't think I'd ever seen one actually being made. Most kids of my generation at some point played with a baseball long enough for the cover to come off, which inevitably led to the unwinding (and unwinding and unwinding) of string until we reached the core. But, until this video, I don't think I really understood how the cover got around the ball in the first place.

Thanks, Dave.

By the way, this may take a few seconds to load.

New Year's Odds and Ends

A brief walk around the webworld:

• Doug Milhoan over at Rays Prospects has put together a nice list of starting pitcher rosters up and down the Rays system. Here's what he sees for the Bulls:

Jeremy Hellickson - unlikely but possible

Alex Cobb - quietly effective year after year

Alex Torres* - my personal upper-level breakout candidate

Richard De Los Santos - already re-signed for another year in Durham

David Newmann* - struggled in AA in ‘10, may move to the bullpen or repeat AA

Jeremy Hall - not really a prospect but quietly had a nice year in AA in ‘10

Minor league free agents

Comment: Hellickson isn’t really likely, but minor league free agents are. The Rays always stash some AAAA-type pitchers in Durham. Some possibilities include former Bulls such as Brian Baker, Carlos Hernandez*, Heath Phillips*, Virgil Vasquez, and Jason Cromer*.

• Jim Donten, a frequent contributor to Rays Prospects, has started a blog covering the Charlotte (as in Port Charlotte, Florida) Stone Crabs, Claw Digest. Should be a good place to keep an eye out for prospective Bulls.

• Does it seem to you like the baseball season has been dragging on much longer in recent years? That because it has. Craig Robinson over at Flip Flop Fly Ball has put together yet another of his really great charts that shows us how much longer.

• It seems while we were speculating on the “Montoyo Merry-Go-Round” last year, down in St. Petersburg Joe Maddon was setting his own standard for lineup shifting. In his case, it was likely to have to do with pitching matchups, while in Charlie Montoyo’s case probably mostly about player development. At any rate, Cork Gaines at Rays Index thinks things should settle down with the Rays. A stable lineup is one of his wished for “gifts” in his “Seven Days of Raysmas” series.

Happy New Year!

Rays Roster Projections

Cork Gaines over at RaysIndex has a pretty good track record at thinking through where the Rays might be going. Recently he posted his 25-man and 40-man roster projections and they are worth looking at. I particularly like the way that Cork puts these together. And a lot of interesting information is buried in the notes.

Why should we Bulls fans care?

A couple of reasons.

First of all, if this is the way it shakes out, a huge number of 2010 Bulls are going to be playing in the big leagues in 2011: Dan Johnson, Elliot Johnson, Desmond Jennings, Matt Joyce, Justin Ruggiano, Jeremy Hellickson, and Mike Ekstrom were all Bulls regulars last year. That’s a huge transfer of talent from minor to major leagues. I’d bet it is easily the biggest shift in Bulls’ history — but I’ll defer to any careful reader out there with a better handle on history than I. Note also that John Jaso, Reid Brignac, Ben Zobrist, Wade Davis, and Jeff Neimann are barely out of their Bulls uniforms.

The second, and more interesting, reason to take a look is that the Bulls’ 2011 roster will come from two pools of players — those players on the 40-man but not on the 25-man roster, and the group of players labeled “non-roster invitees” (that is, the guys who get invited to spring training by the Rays). We have little information on the non-roster invitees so far.

However, if Gaines is close to being correct, and the Bulls continue to carry 12 position players in 2011, only four position player slots are filled. He’s got Anderson on first, Ashley and Lobaton catching, and Perez in the outfield.

Interesting times.

Winter Weaving

People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.

Rogers Hornsby

Back in 2009 most of the Durham Bulls promotional gear was Tampa Bay Rays-themed. We happened to have two Diamond Club memberships that year and we ended up with a lot of Rays t-shirts.

In 2010 the emphasis went back to the Bulls. As a result, we ended up with more t-shirts than we would ever wear.

It's winter. Time to indulge my other obsession.

First, take a bunch of those Rays t-shirts.

Then cut them up to strips.

After that, get some very strong cotton yarn in baseball-ish colors and string up my loom.

Then start weaving the strips of t-shirts into the red and white yarn.

A few days later, cut it off and here you are with a Tampa Bay Rays/Durham Bulls placemat. Suitable for fine dining, or maybe just a hot dog.

———

Winter isn't over, so we'll have to find a few more projects to get us to spring.

In the meantime:

Happy Holidays!

Elliot Johnson Interview

As careful readers know, things are looking up for veteran Durham Bulls infielder Elliot Johnson. He's on the 40-man and looks to be a regular middle infielder for the Rays next year.

Steve Slowinski over at DRaysBay has just put up a terrific interview with Elliot and his wife, Nicole (one of our favorite bloggers). Here are a couple of quotes just as teasers. You really should head over and take a look.

On stealing bases:

Charlie [Montoyo, Bulls manager] is actually a little conservative when it comes to stealing bases believe it or not.

On his late development as a shortstop:

We had a guy by the name of BJ Upton playing short during the time when I was in the minors, so they developed me as a second baseman and we all know how that played out. So I only started playing short regularly late in the ‘09 season.

Charlie's Back ... and More

The Bulls website is reporting that Charlie Montoyo is coming back to Durham for the 2011 season. Dave Myers, hitting coach, is back for his third season. To replace pitching coach Xavier Hernandez, who left the Bulls at the end of last season, Neil Allen has been brought up from the Rays' Single-A franchise, the Charlotte Stone Crabs.

Good news. We speculated some last year that Charlie, who has garnered just about every award a minor league manager can earn, might be due to move up to the big leagues. We're happy to have him back.

In the meantime ...

Over at RaysProspects we were pointed to a terrific article at MiLB.com that mentions a bunch of last year's stars. The author obviously spent a good bit of time talking with Montoyo and he got some great quotes. Montoyo had good things to say about Chris Richard, Dan Johnson, Elliot Johnson, Justin Ruggiano, Leslie Anderson, and Desmond Jennings. Particularly telling was this quote about Jeremy Hellickson:

“The joke in the clubhouse was, ‘Is Jeremy gonna work today or is he gonna pitch?’ because they always had him working on this pitch or that pitch instead of just pitching a game, and he still had a really good year.”

There's also a hint that Chris Richard might be back for 2011. We can hope.

Then over at DRaysBay we have FreeZorrilla with a first-rate interview with Alex Cobb. With any luck, we're going to see a lot of Mr. Cobb next season.

Back at RaysProspects we find their Top 30 list. These are the guys to keep an eye on during spring training. A couple of them will end up with the Rays, but a few will be spending a lot of time in Durham next year.

Update: The Durham Herald-Sun apparently called Charlie and picked up a couple of quotes.