Andrew Friedman speaks on Bonds and Pena; Olney on Kazmir

Finally, we get to here it from the horse's mouth. Over the past three days there have been all types of stories saying the Rays should sign Barry Bonds, the Rays shouldn't sign bonds, the Rays are interested in Bonds, and according to MLBTR, the Rays were never really interested in signing bonds. Leave it to the GodFather Peter Gammons to deliver the real deal. From Mr. Gammons blog today:

The Rays did discuss Barry Bonds nearly a month ago in personnel meetings. "If I didn't entertain ideas, be it a signing of a great hitter like Bonds or a trade, I should be fired," says general manager Andrew Friedman. "But that is past." Agent Jeff Borris is right: Bonds can still hit, and he's still a treasure to watch. But in this case, the Rays have to find out if Rocco Baldelli can hold up, and he's going to get a load of the DH at-bats. Also, a couple of the trades by Tampa this winter were to allow Joe Maddon to go from firefighter to manager.

What an excellent quote by Andrew and he is absolutely correct. His job as a GM is to explore every available option to make the team better. This doesn't mean he has to follow through on everything he explores, but if it's there and it can improve the team he should consider it. Friedman also talked about Carlos Pena as a franchinse person, not player:

"the great thing about Carlos Pena is that more than being a franchise player, he's a franchise person."

Not only that, but Carlos's mother cooks the best plantains you'll ever eat.

I also wanted to add this piece in here. Buster Olney speaks on the difference in opinions between Kazmir and the Rays on his recovery time.

Scott Kazmir wants to be on the mound on Opening Day, writes Marc Lancaster, but the Rays are taking a different approach in treating the pitcher's injury. I'd bet that what they are telling him is this: Don't worry about an arbitrary date in one year of your life, and let's focus on how to put you in the best possible position to make another 300 to 400 starts in your career.

I know Kaz wants to be out there, but hopefully he thinks long-term on this subject.

Video of Maddon speaking on Bonds

Maddon admits talk about Bonds

I'm not going to get into too much detail because we covered it in the post below, but Joe Maddon confirms internal discussion about Barry Bonds. From ESPN.com :

"Manager Joe Maddon said Monday he knew "little" about what was going on, but acknowledged some thought has been given to the career home-run leader.

"A minor discussion was thrown out there a little bit, and it's really not gone any further than that," Maddon said after Monday's workout at the team's spring training facility. "That's all it is right now."

Maddon shrugged off a question about how Bonds might fit in with the Rays if the team decided to pursue him and ultimately added him to the roster.

"It's hard to conjecture. ... I don't know this man. I only know what I read, and I'm very much open to meeting people and drawing my own conclusions about people. I don't necessarily believe everything that I read," Maddon said.

"For me to create conjecture of what it's going to be like, I really don't want to go there right now. ... So many things are going good right now. If I have to face those moments, I'll do it at the appropriate time. But for right now, it's really about nothing."

Bonds on Deck?

In today's edition of the St. Pete Times there's an article about the Rays possibly kicking around the idea of signing Barry Bonds. For now the talks have been only internal and there has not been a formal meeting between Rays Execs and Bonds's agent Jeff Bormis. However, the article did mention that Borris is in Tampa this week as is Rays principal owner Stu Sternberg. If Bonds is signed it would create a log-jam at RF/DH as one of the projected trio of Gomes/Floyd/Baldelli would most likely go elsewhere.

Even if this is just a juicy little rumor, at this point it's fun to speculate on what a Rays lineup would look like with Bonds. Here is a projection with Bonds.

2B Iwamura
LF Crawford
1B Pena
CF Upton
DH Bonds
RF Baldelli/Floyd/Gomes*
3B Longoria*
C Navarro
SS Bartlett

*We assume RF will consist of 2 of the 3 names mentioned. Also, until Joel Guzman and Willy Aybar show up we will have Evan penciled in for opening day.

Now we will just look at the lineup in terms of OPS+ with of 100 being an average player. Anything over 100 is considered above average and below 100 below average. All numbers are from 2007 with one projection for Evan Longoria. From the top:

105
117
172
136
170
65/102/105
120*
70
88

*Evan Longoria's projected OPS+ based on a terribly complicated formula by taking the average OPS+ of two players he has been compared to: Alex Gordon and Ryan Braun.

That is one scary lineup. It may be a little left handed heavy with four out of the top five, but when those are your best players you have to play them. Rocco's 65 stands out in the middle of the lineup, but we, like everyone, are holding out hope that Rocco can play this year at the level he played at in 2006 when he came back to post a 122 OPS+.

Buster Olney touched on this topic today in his ESPN.com blog. He basically says that signing Bonds would make a whole lot of sense, for the right price. He gives us four reasons why this deal may happen.

"1. At this point, Bonds might be willing to play for far less than he played for last year, when he earned a base salary of about $17 million -- and he would be a natural attendance draw for the Rays.

2. Bonds's patience at the plate is something that the young and developing Rays' hitters could learn from over a long season.

3. In a new place, on a new team, and in a short-term situation, Bonds's allegedly stifling clubhouse presence (read between the lines in the quotes from the Giants' players last week) might not be any kind of problem at all.

4. Most importantly: A lineup with Bonds, who racked up a .480 on-base percentage last year, makes the Rays a better team."

He goes on to say that the Rays are "not going to win the AL East this year", but "are going to have a whole lot to say about who does win the division; you could argue that they might be the reason why only one team might make the playoffs out of the deep AL East."

The Rays can play spoiler for another year or two before they make their descent toward the playoffs.