Ray

Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching that splitter. Absolutely nasty.

Small thing, but the new turf look amazing and gives the SkyDome a much more ballpark feel. Excited to see what Shapiro does with the large scale renovations.

There should be no scenario where Kirk is batting below guys like Tapia/Biggio, just for the case of righty-lefty separation. I like this lineup.

Already posted in the GDT, but Espinal already surpassed his max exit velo last by 2.5 mph lol

We have yet to strike out a single Ranger this game lol

Estiven Machado 3-for-3. The legend begins also. That Dunedin team will be fun to follow.

By the way, Tiedemmen barely throwing his slider today. Mostly changeup. And he’s still dominating.

Ricky Tiedemann velo readings….the legend begins

Gotta say, that top 5 for Rangers isn't bad. Better than I thought it would be. 6-9 sucks bad though.

That’s putting it lightly. .565 OPS against LHP last season. If Jared Walsh was on the Rays, he would essentially never face LHP. But Angels gonna Angel.

Matt Duffy batting cleanup. Holy s*** Angels.

Atkins has done really well to load up that OF with depth for cheap. Tapia & Zimmer aren't great, but they raise the floor for this team considerably (Zimmer is projected for 1.2 fWAR). There's some untapped potential there. The trouble with Zimmer is the inability to stay healthy.

Jays win >100 games for the first time in franchise history. Tampa Bay Rays miss the playoffs

Actually, my guess is Zack Collins just gets optioned down to AAA and we carry 2 catchers.

Zimmer doesn't have options, so I'm a little confused at this move. Is that goodbye to Katoh? Did one of the OF's get hurt?

Yep. Seems like the Pirates are still quite awful.

Shane Bieber sitting 90-91 mph on his fastball, and the spin rates on his slider are down 200 rpm.

Seems like we were in on Semien until the end, according to some of his comments today. Kinda gave the impression that he was close to signing, until the Rangers came in and gave him a stupid amount of money.

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure this is a slam-dunk good deal for the Pirates. Outside of the 24 game sample in the COVID season, Hayes hasn't exactly shown the ability to barrel the ball consistently even if he does have good exit velos. Ben Cherington & Steve Sanders are running things there though, so you gotta give them the benefit of the doubt. And Hayes is very good defensively. Also, this just makes the Jose Ramirez extension look so much worse. Young 3B with an okay bat getting $70M guaranteed. Arguably the best 3B in the league getting $124M guaranteed.

The bullpen had the 9th best xFIP in baseball (6th best in the AL), and 12th best SIERA (7th best in the AL) after the acquisition of Richards & Cimber. They really helped solidify things down the stretch. The bullpen also wasn't as bad as you'd think. They just happened to always give up runs in high-leverage situations, which made them seem worse than they were. There was certainly some bad luck there. I wouldn't say it's a great bullpen, but certainly above average, and even could be good if managed properly by Montoyo (which he got better at as the season went on). Overall: Romano (great) Mayza (good, could be great if he takes a step forward) Garcia (good) Cimber (good) Richards (good) Merryweather (great, when healthy) Phelps (good, when healthy) Saucedo (fine, when used in the right situations) Stripling (good for a long reliever) Thornton (meh. Fine for mop up duty) Not many "bad" relievers there, but we'll have to see how it pans out. Bullpens are volatile year-to-year, and it'll probably look different by end of April anyways. Improved defense with Chapman at 3B will help. SP's giving good outings will help. Montoyo not being a total numbskull with some of his decision-making (hopefully) will help.

His fastball was sitting 86-88 mph. Big yikes for the last start before the regular season.

Minor league season officially starts today. Bisons playing today, with the rest of the full season affiliates starting April 8th. Use this link to track box scores for our minor league affiliates: https://www.mlb.com/prospects/stats/affiliates?teamId=141 Worth bookmarking.

Gausman looked good. It’s nice to see him reach back for 98 mph later in the game.

We essentially got left handed Riley Adams with better offensive potential.