Later Hammel

In case any one out there has actually listened to my podcast then what I'm about to write won't come as much of a surprise, but for those of you with a life I'll try to make this short and sweet. I've had a bit of a conspiracy theory involving the Rays that dates back to the end of spring training, and basically it goes as follows.

The only real problem about having so much raw, untapped talent is that it's hard to single out who's in and who's out as quickly as you would want. And this formula becomes even more difficult when these fringe players are out of options, and just happen to be good enough that you can't cut them out right. So what do you do? Well if you're the Rays you send down the players with options even if they are the best player (Longoria). And you put a guaranteed starter on the DL even if he's not that hurt (Kazmir). All of this was done just to try to get a few extra weeks to evaluate the talent that's left.

Now for the last few weeks with the team playing quite well management has been almost hoping for a bad outing just to help them make there minds up. And now that Kazmir is coming back time is running out fast. Well last night Jason Hammel gave them the excuse they needed. After giving up three runs and putting a lot of base runners on, Maddon had no choice but to pull him after only going 2 2/3 innings. Now we will go over the reasons why Hammel has drawn the unlucky chamber in this game of Rays Roulette. Kaz, Sheilds, and Garza are absolute locks which leads only two starting positions and with success of Sonny and the hard on they have for Jackson the chances of the starting five changing is slim to nill.

And with the bullpen playing out of their minds the only changes that will be made is dropping Birkins for Reyes, but even Birkins is playing well, unless of course they release Reyes and keep Hammel but I just don't see that happening. And if you look to the bench Haynes is the one they might move but then you have to take in to consideration what to do when Aybar and Zobrist are healthy. Now all of this is of course is speculation but no matter how you look at it Hammel's days are numbered, and it's not because he can't cut, but because he's on a team with too much talent.