Tampa Bay Rays

There are very few things the ultra-versatile Ben Zobrist can't do.  Later today, the list gets smaller. Scratch signing a long-term contract extension off the list, as Zobrist will sign on the dotted line keeping him with the Rays through 2015.

The former utility player had a breakout season last year, hitting .297, with 27 HR, and 91 RBI.  Questions abound as to whether that was a career year or if he could replicate the success.

Count the Rays as believers.

Don't look now Red Sox fans and Yankees fans, but you've got some competition. The Tampa Bay Rays are back.

Baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. Two weeks do not make a season. But, watching the Rays first two weeks, one would have to say they have that look. That look of a team on a mission. They are pitching. They are hitting. They are playing defense. They are confident that they are going to win no matter the situation.

Sitting in a doctor's office waiting room in mid-2007, I grabbed a magazine whose headline article read:

2010: The Devil Rays Are the Best Team in Baseball

I read the article, and the only thing I could think of was "yea, right, like that'll ever happen." Three years later, here we are, April 19, 2010, and the Rays (10-3) have the best record in the majors. Sure, only 13 games have been played in this very young season but it has been very clear to anyone who has watched a Rays game that these guys are on a mission to be the best team in the league.

Like a Nor'easter, they blew in wrecking everything in sight and leaving nothing but rubble in their wake.

Their bats thundered, while their pitchers blew the rawhide by their Boston adversaries as if they were tornadoes twisting the night away.

It was just four games in April, games that perhaps at the end of a 162 game season may not mean a whole lot.

Still, that whooshing sound you heard from Fenway Park was Red Sox Nation's collective gasp, "Ruh-roh."

The Tampa Bay Rays won their seventh in a row by defeating the Boston Red Sox 8-2 on Monday afternoon at Fenway Park. The Red Sox have now lost six of their last seven, which includes this four game sweep by the Rays.

Red Sox starting pitcher John Lackey had his first rough outing in a Boston uniform. He went just 3.1 innings, allowing eight runs, nine hits, and one walk, while throwing a total of 79 pitches. Lackey struck out only one batter, which occurred in the third inning.

Today we check in with the Rays' minor league affiliates and see what they’ve done to this point in the season. After only 10 games, we've seen one player called up from Durham (catcher John Jaso) and there already seems to be at least one other player that could play his way onto the big league team. We'll take a look at each affiliate and focus on the highlights and lowlights of the early-going.

Durham Bulls (AAA)

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.

The American League East has been competitive ever since the Tampa Bay Rays stepped up and started challenging for the pennant recently.

The Rays will need daily excellence to dethrone the Yankees and Red Sox this season.

Here we go again—Rays and Red Sox, a budding rivalry renewed. The Tampa Bay Rays, fresh off their sweep of division rival Baltimore, head into Beantown to take on the struggling Boston Red Sox, losers of five of their last nine games.

For the Rays, who lead Boston by two games and are a half game behind the perennially fluky Toronto Blue Jays, it's a golden opportunity to put the team that likely will be their greatest competition for a wild-card berth further behind them.

  I’ll admit it, Javier Vazquez is not pitching well. Obviously that is not a huge revelation, but this 0-2 start is not what I expected. Still, a lot of Yankee fans are turning on him and some never forgave him for the grand slam he gave up to Johnny Damon in 2004 and it’s already tired.