David Price

Fantasy Baseball’s Pitching Line of the Week:

Stephen Strasburg (SP-WAS)  7 IP, 4H, 2R, 0 BB, 14 K, W

The long awaited Major League debut of Stephen Strasburg is officially over. The dust has settled, but some fans have yet to pick their chins off of the ground from the amazement that was a dominating fourteen strikeout performance.

The 2007 first year player draft was very pitcher-heavy, but with the exception of the No. 1 overall selection, some of the biggest names to come out of it were actually position players.

A total of 18 pitchers were called in the first round alone, led by Vanderbilt graduate David Price, but there was good overall depth in the draft, especially through the first three rounds.

How many GMs do you think are out there right now still kicking themselves that Jason Heyward fell to No. 14?

Coming into this season, critics and fans were well aware of the Tampa Bay Rays ability to score runs. With one of the best young line-ups in baseball, the Rays were predicted to fight for the AL East crown with the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.

Most people picked the Yankees and the Sox to finish ahead of the Rays because of one thing: starting pitching. After a sub-par year from both Matt Garza and James Shields in 2009, the Rays aces have gotten off to great year in 2010.

Lets take a closer look at James Shields, Matt Garza and the rest of the Tampa Bay rotation.

With baseball a full two months in the books, teams are starting to make their runs toward the All-Star break.

With so much parity in MLB, teams with nearly identical records are separated by a few spots, sometimes more.

There are still many teams in realistic contention for their division title, but I will narrow it down to five teams right now that we could see playing in late October.

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Tampa Bay Rays GM Andrew Friedman has been the best in baseball in accumulating young starting pitching. And they are not just young. They are good. They are very good.

The cup is overflowing in Tampa Bay.

After two weeks of the season, all five of the Rays starters are tapping into their immense potential.

If you looked close enough, you could see hype return.

Last night's dominance of the Yankees has grabbed headlines for a certain young Rays pitcher. David Price put himself back in the national spotlight pitch by pitch. 

Rays fans saw a flashback to the pitcher they've been waiting for.

Only one month into getting his first taste of the major leagues, David Price was called upon to get the most important outs in franchise history. Price held the world by a string when he closed out Game 7 of the 2008 ALCS. 

But then a funny thing happened.

For the Tampa Bay Rays, there is no tomorrow. The Rays head into the 2010 season having put together a terrific spring, winning a club record 20 grapefruit league games. Their winning percentage was best in the majors at .750 and they won seven of eight to enter the season with some momentum.

All that Spring success doesn't mean a hill of beans now, though, because in a few days, the bullets fly for real and the team embarks on a 162 game escapade to ruin Boston or New York's hopes of a ticker tape parade.

2008 was truly a magical season for the Tampa Bay Rays. After taking the entire baseball world by surprise by beating out the Yankees and Red Sox for the AL East Title, the Rays knocked Boston out of the playoffs to advance to their first ever World Series. The Rays followed up the best season in franchise history, with the second best season in team history in 2009. Normally 84 wins would have signaled a party in Tampa Bay, however in 2009 it was a major disappointment.

You've heard it plenty of times already this spring. The 2010 season is the most important season that the Tampa Bay Rays have faced in the entirety of their short history.

While that may sound like daunting news, it is slightly relieving to observe the fact that this will likely be the most talented team to ever take the green carpet at Tropicana Field.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the pitching staff that the Rays have assembled for 2010.

As the spring games roll on, the focus is going to shift greatly to the pitchers, where there are quite a few interesting battles brewing.  Let’s take a look at how things played out in today’s games: