That’s an improvement — they were 15 out in the East midway through June — but their realistic chances of making the postseason aren’t good. As of Saturday morning, FanGraphs gives them a 3.6 percent chance of either winning the division or claiming a wild-card spot.
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So they have a decision to make: Are they going to trade ace lefty David Price?
It’s hard to imagine that the Rays, a team that has build its foundation on maximizing returns for its most valuable assets/players, won’t deal Price before the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline. Price, who has a 3.42 ERA and outstanding 7.95 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 2014, is under team control through the end of next season (he’s expected to make in the neighborhood of $20 million in 2015), and then he’ll be a free agent.
The budget-restrained Rays won’t be able to sign him to an extension. They will move him at some point, and because he’s still under control for a season and a half, Price will never command more of a return for the Rays than he does right now.
If/when they come to the determination that a World Series run isn’t in the cards for 2014 (remember that 3.6 percent chance of making the postseason?), a trade is likely if they can find a team willing to meet their prospect demands.
The Rays know this. Price knows this.
“I’m definitely not immune to it,” Price told the Tampa Tribune. “It’s something I try not to think about, and I try not talk about it with my teammates. That’s the last thing I want them to be doing, is thinking about if we don’t win I could be gone. I don’t want (third baseman Evan Longoria) to go to the plate thinking he needs to do something special to keep me a Ray. I want everybody to go out and continue to play baseball the way we have over the past three weeks, and hopefully things will kind of work themselves out.”
So where will Price land?
Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com says the Mariners could be a good fit. Price doesn’t necessarily fill their biggest need — a power hitter — but there aren’t many of those available right now. And the potential to put Price into a playoff rotation that includes Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma is pretty intriguing.
The A’s were interested in Price before making the deal for Jeff Samardzija. The Dodgers have been loosely connected, as have the Cardinals, to a certain extent. The Angels and Giants are interested, but might not having the trading chips available to make a deal happen. The Yankees and Blue Jays could really use Price, but it’s hard to see Tampa Bay dealing him within the AL East.
There are issues with a deal, of course. Most teams don’t have or don’t want to trade the type of prospects it would take to land Price — consider Addison Russell alone wasn’t enough to get Samardzija, and didn’t work for Price, either — and then there’s the concern of retaining him.
Price, who will be just 30 years old when opening day 2016 rolls around, is almost certainly going to get a long-term contract with a total value approaching or exceeding $160 million. That’s a bit of a stumbling block for most teams, especially when added to the cost of the prospects it took to acquire him.
So maybe a team looking to trade for Price looks solely at the next year and a half. If the window to potentially win a World Series is legitimately wide open — as is the case with the Mariners, Dodgers and Cardinals, to name a few — maybe a team jumps at the opportunity, knowing it’ll let Price walk after the 2015 season.
Regardless what happens, it’ll be interesting to watch how Tampa Bay handles this issue the rest of the month.
