The Tampa Bay Rays’ minor league system still has work to do. It has improved after the Rays restocked it in trades and made a few good selections in the draft, but it is not all the way back to being among the best organizations in baseball. We saw an example of that this spring as the Rays had decent solid pitchers to resort to in face of their injures, but no one spectacular, no clearly big league-ready starter who was set to return to Triple-A just because there had been no rotation spot available.
Even though the Rays’ system is not quite where the team wants it to be, however, we can still celebrate the successes of individual players.