30 Teams in 30 Days: Tampa Bay Rays

30 Teams in 30 Days is a preseason feature to highlight the significant changes to each of the major league teams. It's meant to get everyone up to speed before our pre-season predictions in mid-March.

After sucking balls their first 10 years in the league, the Rays finally had a record above .500. Not only did they have a winning record, they won the AL east and made it all the way to the World Series. After going into the series as favorites, they were upset by the Phillies after Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria decided not to show up. However, it was an outstanding season for the Rays, and they won't be going away.

Tampa Bay's great farm system finally paid off with homegrown players like Longoria, B.J. Upton, James Shields, and Scott Kazmir making huge competitions to the AL winner.

C-Dioner Navarro
1B-Carlos Pena
2B-Akinori Iwamura
SS-Jason Bartlett
3B-Evan Longoria
OF-Carl Crawford
OF-Bossman Jr. Upton
OF-Gabe Gross
DH-Pat Burrell

SP-Scott Kazmir
SP-James Shields
SP-Matt Garza
SP-Andy Sonnanstine
SP-David Price
CL-Dan Wheeler

The Rays should be contenders again in 2009, and hopefully they can win the division and keep either the Yankees or Red Sox at home for the playoffs.

Joe Torre Rips Yankees. Becomes Favorite Son of ISP.

The New York Post and Daily News are reporting today that Dodgers manager Joe Torre rips the New York Yankees in his new book "The Yankee Years." Not surprisingly, Torre reveals that many of Alex Rodriguez's teammates often mocked him by calling him "A-fraud." I first came across this delicious piece of news at the always good Big League Stew.

The most entertaining part of the post is, of course, the comments.

thats awesome. yankees suck. keep spending all that money for another losing season you idiots. A rod is over rated. cant wait to see him go 0-4 every other game just like last year. -Go Boston

Because that .302 avg, .392 OBP, 35 homers, and 102 rbi's in 138 games is just complete horseshit! Fuck, if Mike Lowell would have played in 138 games he would have put up much better numbers!

[profane] dodgers and [profane] every1 yankes own ass nd if u say they dont get ur head out of ur ass and look how many world series they won dumasses- Peter N

Peter sure is doing Yankee nation proud by lowering their collective IQ by 10 points and helping us all remember the Yankees haven't won a World Series in almost a decade.

Who cares the Twins are the only team that matters. -fuseigniter

Since when the fuck do the Twins have fans?

I think joe torres should shut up is big mouth with big nose A -rod is the best player there is in history of baseball,better than any yankees player theres was, ppl should stop hating on him. he is gettin pay alot of money because he is that good or prolly ppl are hating cuz he aint a type of skin color that they want him to b. -Mar

We should definitely make this a racial thing. First opinion up on this- Ozzie Guillen.