Rays lefty Drew Smyly will make at least two more rehab starts before rejoining the club, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reported earlier this week. The first of those outings will come today, with a second one perhaps coming on Tuesday of next week. As Topkin notes, the Rays won’t need a fifth starter until Aug. 18, at which point Smyly could conceivably join the rotation. His return should be a nice boost to the Rays, as Smyly’s season was in doubt due to a shoulder tear earlier this year. The Rays are in particular need of rotation help at the moment after optioning Matt Moore to Triple-A in an effort to get the talented lefty back on track following some post-Tommy-John struggles.
More from the AL East…
- The Rays felt they needed a veteran bat to boost the lineup versus right-handed pitching after trading David DeJesus, writes Topkin, which led to the team’s claim of Daniel Nava from the division-rival Red Sox yesterday. Part of the reason the Rays chose to act may be an upcoming stretch against primarily right-handed starters. “He does a nice job against right-handed pitching,” said manager Kevin Cash — a former teammate of Nava. “He makes pitchers work a lot.”
- Red Sox DH David Ortiz is just 10 plate appearances shy of locking in a $10MM salary for the 2016 season by way of vesting option, writes WEEI.com’s John Tomase. As Tomase notes, Ortiz got off to a slow start in 2015, again sparking some debate about how much he had left in the tank. However, he’s homered 15 times in 45 games since June 10 and is hitting .273/.378/.588 in that time. “You know how it is with myself,” said Ortiz to Tomase. “Whenever I have a slow start, or things aren’t going my way, people start criticizing and saying things. But I guess that’s how it’s going to be. I can put up with that. I know what I’m capable of doing.” Ortiz expressed pride in having earned another year at the big league level due to his performance as opposed to simply having the guarantee built into his contract. “That’s the way we pretty much agreed to do things,” said Ortiz of his incentive-laden deal. “…I agreed to do it that way, because if I don’t put up numbers, what would be the reason to continue playing?”
- While many have advocated for the Red Sox to hire Dave Dombrowski as the team president to work in conjunction with GM Ben Cherington, Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe feels that’s an awkward situation. If the Sox are going to go that route, they might as well fire Cherington, Abraham writes, as Dombrowski would want input in the staff working underneath him anyhow. Cherington has the trust of owner John Henry, Abraham continues, so such a scenario isn’t likely to play out. He does, however, need some help in the form of better scouts and analysts in the front office. As Abraham concludes, Cherington hasn’t been the sole driving force behind the acquisitions of Joe Kelly, Rick Porcello and Justin Masterson, and the team has had poor results in developing pitching despite selecting five arms in the first round from 2008-12.
- Though the Blue Jays traded away an enormous amount of prospect capital prior to this year’s trade deadline, Shi Davidi of Sportsnet writes that they’re still positioned to contend beyond the 2015 season. The Blue Jays have a strong core of position players that will return next season, with the primary question marks coming from the pitching staff. David Price, Mark Buehrle, Marco Estrada, R.A. Dickey (who has a club option), LaTroy Hawkins and Mark Lowe are all free agents this offseason. The club does have Marcus Stroman returning, but there will still be holes to fill. Davidi takes a position-by-position look at the Jays, examining their current Major League options as well as the depth pieces at each position in the minors.
Red Sox need better analyses? What? THE team for this in our post Billy Beane infatuated media age? Bill James retire? Analysis still not 100% of the game yet?
Not to mention David Price is obviously a FA at the end of the year as well.
Jays have all the makings of this offseasons “patsy” in free agency. The one agents use to drive up prices for their free agents. It’s not that Toronto isn’t a viable option…but the exchange rates and taxes play into things.
Don’t let facts get in the way. What do exchange rates have to do with anything? They are paid in US dollars. So there money is worth MORE in Canada. LA/Anaheim/NY all have higher tax rates.
ttp://www.tsn.ca/taxman-wins-when-contracts-are-signed-1.322654
Also not to mention ways around taxes depending where you have residence.
$1 American is worth $.76 Canadian currently. Players also pay tax on their income when they visit other states….California has a staggering entertainer tax. Not that Price will simply go for top dollar….but Texas has zero state income tax. Simple things like fuel at the pump is also more expensive in Canada…perhaps 50 cents per gallon or more. So your American dollar gets you 76 cents to purchase fuel that’s the equivalent of 50 cents higher…that amount always moves…but Canada is typically more expensive. Thank goodness they get paid American right now or Toronto wouldn’t be able to draw players in…a $200m American contract would have $150m value in Canadian without the same purchasing power. It’d be a wash if living in Canada was on average 3/4 as expensive as America, but its not… And in MANY American locations its not by a long shot. Granted… These guys make so much money that they price at the pump isn’t such a big deal to them….but get away from the NE corridor and California and your money plays much better. Maybe New York or San Francisco comp to Toronto…but not most places…not even Florida. Texas is solid… But even places like Kansas City sneak in as valuable…that’s a place where same sqft real estate goes for half of SoCal
I think you need to learn how to interpret exchange rates. $1 CANADIAN is worth 76 Cents USD. You have it backwards.
$1 US will buy you $1.31 Canadian. Jesus. Is it that hard?
So at the pump your American Dollar gets you $1.31, not 76 cents. A 200mil USD contract would get you 262mil Canadian.
You do have a point about gas and general cost of living being more expensive in Toronto than in many US States (especially those low/no state income tax states like Florida, Texas, Ohio, etc.), but that is OFFSET, not made worse, by the fact the players are paid in USD.
Of course in Canada you are far less likely to be shot, lower crime rate, free health care (not an issue for ML players) and if you pitch for Toronto you get an offense that is killer to help your HOF chances (since voters are addicted to wins)
Free health care my rear…someone pays for it and its what makes the cost of living so high.
You Americans are funny. Your system costs as much as 50% more with fear of losing your health care if you lose your job…people go to work sick. Up here it is part of our taxes, yes, but unless you think being poor = deserve to die or live with fixable injuries then you should prefer a system like ours.
No…I like Canada and your system. I think what it comes down to is people in America choosing personal freedom over govt control. There’s not much the govt controls that doesn’t turn into a bureaucratic nightmare here. Hospitals cannot refuse service here…so we essentially do have socialized medicine. How bureaucratic is your health care system…I’m curious.
America just has some historic flaws.
For services covered by provincial healthcare insurance the bureaucracy for the patient is much less than with a private insurer. You just present your health care card, there is no approval process or anything like that, doctor takes care of you and you leave when you are better.
Not everything is covered by our medicare programs, medicine you get while you are under care in a hospital is covered, but prescriptions you have to pay for at the pharmacy, dental is not usually covered, so generally many Canadians have private insurance as well to cover these. That is when the real stress comes in, the forms, and having claims rejected, paying up front and having to wait for your money.
So I would say, while there are good and bad parts of our system (cause it is a hard expensive problem and perfect solutions don’t exist). The best part we love as Canadians most is that when you are sick you can go to the hospital and not have to worry justifying treatment, having some suit second guess your doctor, whether we can afford to get better.
Let me say that you guys have the best radio team in the entire game… I listen to Howarth all the time…I might have liked Ashby better with him..but its alright
We’ll see how sustainable the free health care is as the population expands.
I just went and looked into Toronto’s murder rate.. Astonishing.. 2/100,000 ratio. I live in a city of about 200,000 and my murder rate is 6/100,000. Wow…maybe Toronto will sign me. I don’t care about taxes or anything… My wife is a CPA… Sign me up
I did get the exchange backwards when I typed it…but that still makes the purchasing power less in Canada given the higher taxes and goods pricing. What I’m really saying is that Toronto does not have an economic advantage, nor does it have much else to sell it in the way that a California team might. The Jays will have a tough go attracting free agents… The deck is against them. Its more than just economics, its the turf right now and many other things.
Top US tax bracket is 35%, while top Canadian is 29%….but free agents are hurt in Canada due to fewer deductible amounts. It appears that lower income people might benefit more in Canada. I’m not going to get off on any us/Canada sociology discussions…I really love Canada and its hard to compare two different environments and political systems
I was in Vancouver last summer and did the conversions at this one gas station (although to be fair Vancouver is extremely expensive even for Canada and I think this gas station was particularly high as well) and gas was $6.80 CAD a gallon. Six dollars and eighty cents.
Ha, I had Price in there, re-ordered the names and somehow left him off. Brain malfunction. Adding him back to the post now. Thanks.
Oh, and the lesser know David Price will also be a free agent.
Sounds vaguely familiar, but doesn’t he play for the Rays? (Jokes aside, thanks — somehow left his name off but have added to the post.)
Well since the Red Sox obviously need to overhaul the bullpen in the off season perhaps Dombrowski isn’t the best choice.
I hope the Red Sox also feel that way, because it denies a mans solid +30 years of solid baseball expertise and allows another team to get him
30+ years of baseball experience. 1 World Series title. And the bullpen comment was a joke.
Yeah, I figured it was a joke….30 years of putting teams in position to compete. I suppose Billy Beane fails as well. DD has been successful everywhere and in a major capacity under some kind of economic strain. That 94 Expos team was built on his organization… They were solid. I’m not sure calling out a guy for lack of rings is a great idea…what did Scheirholtz win? 2? Every team without a rock solid front office is picking the phone up to DD
His last few years haven’t shown much. They’ve shown he can put together 99% of a winning team but can’t seem to shore up the same problem for multiple seasons in a row. He’s a solid executive, but he’s had all the money he could want and nothing but almost there to show for it. Beane’s failure to win it all more or less proves moneyball is nice to talk about but doesn’t really work when it comes to championships. And his team building for this season was questionable at best. I’m sure there will be lost of interest in Dombrowski. But had he managed to get the Tigers over the hump in the past 4 years, he wouldn’t be unemployed.
Well, DD was forced into making moves for an elderly owner…ultimately the teams were there and it’s the team failure on the field. He built winners on a 162 game model. Would he have been fired if they’d have won? Only if Illitch didn’t have his ring fix satiated. I think this was more about Illitch than about Dombrowski. DD has admitted in interviews that he didn’t think the team could win this season… But it seems Illitch wants to press on. Illitch also wants to write checks to do that. I don’t get the impression Illitch is enamored with holding a top draft pick as an 86 year old.
I just zone out at the term Moneyball. I won’t even get started on that. Way too much polarization on that that doesn’t present the mixed reality of baseball operations
At this point DD was likely telling Illitch…we need to do some kind of rebuild, and Illitch is saying he’s 86
As far as the pen….yeah..that’s been bad. But its tricky predicting that. It’s actually the one thing that Dayton Moore did well from the start…figured out how to not pay for so much uncertainty.
Ah, Ortiz, a man so picked upon by the press….
The Sox have found themselves in a huge hole and unless Henry steps back and let’s a real “hands on” baseball guy run the show, the Sox are doomed for years to come. From top to bottom, the Sox ops staff positions need wholesale changes.
They have a great farm team and a nice young core and tons of money. They are looking to compete in 2017.
What happened to Kelly, Porcello, and Masterson? Career ERA in the mid 4’s (Kelly at 3.98), but this year they all jump to 6. Defense? I guess Masterson was the same pitcher last year though. Thought John Farrell was a decent pitching coach before.