Prediction, Rays go 82-80 in the AL East. Attendance will fall even more, requiring a further reduction of payroll in the future. By the end of this decade, the Marlins may be the lone mlb team in Florida. The Rays don’t have to stay until 2027, that info is wrong as it relates to the agreement.

“The Manny and Damon signing sure look like a desperate move by the Rays, even if it wasn’t expensive.” Yes it does. Manny came cheap, Damon overpriced by any measure; if the Razed got them as a twofer from Boras mills, fine, but they’re not nearly an answer to anything except maybe filling a couple of empty lineup spaces. They’re the Tropicana Dump’s gerontological answers to that mammoth the Japanese want to clone.This is going to be a barely competitive team this year in this particular division regardless. Looking for and evaluating younger players was the way to go.

“…neither player can possibly hope to fill Crawford’s shoes.” Damned if I can see why or how anyone could take issue with that.

“Since the club as constituted will be mediocre, much like the 2009 team, the attendance will be even worse than last year.” Anyone who disagrees with that isn’t paying attention, or else they’ve forgotten how to distinguish between their fantasy team of this offseason and reality – even reality Florida style.

“And Manny will be a cancer in the clubhouse when he’s struggling.” And if you drop an object off the roof of an adjacent condo building, it will fall at a rate of g = 9.8 m/s². Anyone else want to offer another apodictic statement here, or will the preceding two be sufficient for purposes of our discussion?

“So the Rays will have decreased offensive production to go with a weak bullpen. That’s not a prescription for success in the tough AL East.” Now, who wants to step up and aver in any but the most vaguely self-indulgent terms (like your interlocutor skibble) that this is a prescription for success in the AL East?

Coda: Manny may indeed be “one of the best players of the past few decades,” but not one single solitary nanosecond of those decades are going to step to the plate with him in April. As long as spacetime keeps expanding – and every indication says it will – Manny’s glory days are going to keep getting further and further behind him at 299792.458 km/s. And as long as gravity remains more or less constant in and around the Tropicana Tumulus, Johnny Damon’s pegs (good idiom, that) will still be falling into the turf between him and shortstop at the aforementioned rate of g = 9.8 m/s² – maybe a bit more slowly given the feeble force applied to their trajectories (where s² also stands for the ratio of overpayment for any given moment the Razed waste stationing him in the outfield).

As far as being “jealous” of the Feesh, that’s about as dumb a rejoinder as I’ve ever seen on this blog. Why the fan of one attendance-challenged, impecuniously budgeted franchise should be jealous of another one is kinda beyond rational justification. It is true that the Feesh await the opening of Macondo Banana Massacre Field in 2012, but it is irremediably untrue that Selig and Scrooge McLoria “sold it” to the fans (and one can only assume that a correspondent who hasn’t bothered to learn the owner’s name hasn’t bothered to look very deeply into the circumstances surrounding the existence of this facility either). They “sold it” as a backdoor raid on hotel bed tax tourist development funds to the august, perennially incorruptible city and county councils and mayors of Macondo when polls indicated that the population itself (which we’ll call “the fans” for purposes of this discussion) was overwhelmingly opposed to spending a single cent of public tax money on it.

“Blowfish”? It’s Feesh. Learn the local dialect or go back to the USA, Yanqui imperialista recto.

Rays ownership keeps the fans away the way they run the team. Boasting the cheapest ticket in baseball ($5), it still costs $20 to park and another $13 for a beer and hot dog – thats $38 before you even take your seat for the first pitch – more if the YankMees or Dead Sox are in town.

Under the new owners, the franchise is starting to regain some of the stench of Vince Namoli (I swear he still runs concessions at the Trop where 1 beer is the price of a 12 pack) because they want a new stadium at tax payer expense and that isn’t going to happen. The fans in St Pete will not buy that same bag of garbage Selig and the Blowfish owner sold to the Miami fans.

Florida76 is right—it’s a desperation move, and a lousy gamble.

The Rays are magicians at generating runs and this move gives the Rays no financial commitments beyond 2011. Additionally, it lets the Rays save future money on Jennings and let him recover from the power-sapping wrist injury. It is a cheap move that allows the Rays to compete while nurturing the young talent.

Your suggestion of adding to the bullpen is original too. And a great idea considering the market this year! The Rays were able to cheaply acquire Benoit and Soriano last year but this is a year when teams like the As, Sox and even the Yanks have tossed mad dough to sign MR. This doesn’t fit the economic game plan of the Rays.

You don’t replace a player like Carl Crawford. You can’t. But you can replace Pena’s OPS and power production. And you can generate runs.

Consider this: essentially the Rays gave Garza and about 1 million dollars for Archer, Lee, 2 other decent role players, Manny and Damon. Genius (albeit frugal) move. And if Shields performs to his improved peripherals and Hellickson stays healthy, the Rays have a legitimate shot at a wild card spot with an absurdly low pay roll.

Sorry, you’re wrong.

TB farm system is loadeded with arms ala the garza trade. They dont have hitters rdy to step in.

Since the club as constituted will be mediocre, much like the 2009 team, the attendance will be even worse than last year. And Manny will be a cancer in the clubhouse when he’s struggling. So the Rays will have decreased offensive production to go with a weak bullpen. That’s not a prescription for success in the tough AL East.