I actually remember when I said the Rays being mentioned for every good player simply due to their contender status wouldn't bother me, but things are slowly changing with stuff like this and this. I'll address the Price/Pirates note first and simply say if there is one player that the Rays won't trade it's David Price.

Why? Because he's a 22 year old future front line starter on a team that hasn't had too many of those come through the pipelines. Yes, the Rays have quite a few young arms, no that doesn't mean you should trade them for short term gain only. Young pitching is like oil, if you have it in excess you sell it for well over the actual price, otherwise you keep it. The promise of young pitching is what made the Rays trade Delmon Young, what made the Athletics spend four million on Michael Inoa, and what made the Mariners forfeit 2008 for Stephen Strasburg.

Which brings us to the next note that the Rays are interested in Brian Fuentes, Clint Barmes, and Willy Taveras. To their credit both Barmes and Tavares are rangy defenders which would make them valuable to any team, except this one.  Neither are better on defense than the current options, and both of their bats are sorely lacking. No, Jason Bartlett is not an offensive gem, but at least he doesn't hack quite as much as Barmes. To Taveras' credit he has a pretty good understanding of the strike zone, but doesn't seem to willing to actually draw a walk.

Frankly Brian L. Hunter and Bo Hart types are available across the minors, there's little reason to waste assets for bench novelties at best especially when Nate Haynes and Andy Cannizaro are rotting in Durham.

I've got a post coming up later concerning the Rays v. Red Sox, but here's a placeholder for your conversations with a little thought attached. Let me ask you, who do you think has the lowest OPS when faced with runners in scoring position?

A) Carlos Pena

B) B.J. Upton

C) Evan Longoria

Take a minute to think about this, which player performs the worst in runners on situations? I'll give you a hint it's not B.J. Upton, meaning it's either Pena or Longoria. Hey Pena strikes out a lot so maybe him, right? Well here's the thing...no. For all of the talk about how Pena is a rally killer check out his numbers this year:

I'm going to assume this is a surprise to some, but I wanted to use this as a vehicle to ask if anyone else had noticed things about this team that are generally the opposite of the common conception?

Just like yesterday how about we examine the performance of one David Price to other great young hurlers and their first season of at least six or more starts in the minors. I decided to include a few Rays high school arms as a close comparison and a few really good college arms for more direct comparisons.

Frankly I hadn't noticed that Price stacked up quite this well. Yes, the K rate is a little weak, but his low walk rate goes a long way in soothing that and I'm hopeful it rebounds as he adapts to the AA lifestyle. One thing to be really encouraged about: as of now he's allowed the same amount of homeruns against that you and I have this season.

Using Fangraph's leaderboards, here are the 10 players least likely to hack at a pitch outside of the zone:

And the 10 most likely:

Is it just me or is there a difference between being "aggressive" and being "hacky"? For instance let's say a player has a 20% O-Swing, which is really good, but only sees 3.6 P/PA, not great, but if he's not swinging outside of the zone he's simply attacking the pitches inside of the zone early in the count. Meanwhile a player with a high O-Swing%, no matter the P/PA, is "hacky" to me. Does anyone else have similar definitions?

With Tim Beckham finally recording his first extra base hit this past week I figured on a league wide off day it would be a nice time to review what Beckham has done since being drafted first overall in early June. After nearly 60 plate appearances Beckham's .176/.254/.196 line is a bit lackluster, even for an 18 year old in his first pro ball experience.

Beckham has five walks and 11 strikeouts thus far, along with a hit by pitch, stolen base, and one grounder resulting in a double play. Beckham's committed five errors but using the only defensive metric I can find for minor leaguers, range factor, Beckham rates out at 4.45 for comparison B.J. Upton's career RF at short is 4.31. In other words: Beckham covers more ground than water and his error total seems to be a bit skewed since he did make two errors in one game.

Now addressing his batting approach and extended statistics, take a look at this table comparing him to a few other Rays teenagers:

Not too shabby considering his low .400's OPS, but here's the catch: Beckham's hitting roughly 22% of his balls as line drives, yet only has BABIP of .225, more than .100 points below his expected BABIP. He's been ridiculously unlucky, almost the point that it's a joke. On the other hand a 57% ground ball rate probably isn't as bad as it seems - Upton for instance has a 51% grounder rate this season - and Beckham is fast enough to turn some of those into hits.

So through a few weeks the results that people will speak of for Beckham are hardly accurate of his play thus far. Whether his numbers regress to the mean this season or next doesn't matter too much, the important thing is this kid looks supremely talented.