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.

Real Knowledge and Credibility has Arrived

Ladies and gentleman, you will not have to read the same lame, biased opinion from all the White Sox fans who started this blog. Luckily for all of you, I am here to counteract all of the vomit that comes out of their mouths.

Despite the fact the Cubs haven't won a world series in 100 years, these people are essentially jealous of Cub-dom. Don't worry folks, you will run into these types of people all the time. I have to admit I love my Cubbies, regardless of the worst century for any professional sports organization ever.

However, I will not allow that to taint my perspective on other major league issues, players, and teams. I plan to contribute news, non-biased opinions, awfully terrible predictions and things that will be hard for the average baseball fan to find while adding my wonderful sense of humor to all of it.

I'm kidding about those awful predictions, without question, I will prove to be the best predictor of the bunch in 2009. Just use my prediction that the Pittsburgh Pirates would win more games than the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008 as an indicator to what I can do.

I hope to see you all around. Enjoy!