2014 Quarry Unlimited - #7 Tampa Bay Rays Part 2

YELLOW

RED

ORANGE

ROOKIE PROSPECTS

My Top 5 Rays Cards
1. David Price (purple)
2. Curt Casali (rookie prospects)
3. Ali Solis (green)
4. Alex Cobb (green)
5. Ryan Hanigan (blue)


The Rays have been near the bottom among good photos over the past two years of the Quarry Unlimited set.  This year, they might have the best card of the set.  Sorry for the upcoming bad pun, but the Price is definitely right here.  Unfortunately after the trade of David Price to the Tigers, that photo will probably never be seen on real cardboard.  That's a big reason why I do multiple cards for traded players.  For obvious reasons, the Rookie Prospect cards had a much smaller photo selection than the majority of the others.  However, the Casali turned out as one of the best from that subset.  The Solis is cropped a bit weird, but I think it still worked.  The really good play at the plate cards were virtually non-existent this year.  The whole throwback uniform trend is basically just a money grab, especially for the Rays who created "What if" throwback uniforms to occasionally wear.  That being said, those uniforms look awesome.  I would be perfectly okay if the Rays adopted that look as their actual uniform.  The Ryan Hanigan card just makes me smile.  If anyone ever needed a photo to define the phrase "What the *uck?" the Hanigan would definitely be it.



Coming tomorrow - #8 Cleveland Indians

Thanx for reading.

2014 Quarry Unlimited - #7 Tampa Bay Rays Part 1

Today I am featuring the franchise that I am starting to dislike.  I like the players and the team is easy to root for, but there is no team that reminds me more of the inherent problems between the big-markets and the small-markets than the Tampa Bay Rays.  Every good player that is on the Rays is as good as gone after 5 or 6 years.  Except for Evan Longoria and that is just because of the very risky (though brilliant in hindsight) contract given to him before he became a superstar.  Both the manager (Cubs) and the general manager (Dodgers) departed this franchise since the season ended to move up to big market franchises.  Not to mention the fact that Tampa Bay has the worst stadium (well except for maybe Oakland) and least fanbase of any team in the league. 

Tampa really reminds me of the Montreal Expos.  No, not the current Montreal Expos that people remember nostalgically.  The actual Montreal Expos from the 90s and early 2000s.  They were playing in a horrible stadium in front of maybe 5,000 fans on a good day and when they fielded a third place team it was considered a victory.  Tampa has been more successful, but I have a feeling that we are heading back to the "Devil Rays Days" when Tampa failed to win 75 games for their first 10 seasons or so.  It makes me mad because aside from the 2007 Rockies and the 2014 Royals, the 2008 Rays were my favorite World Series team of the 21st century.  Now they are heading for a decade or more of being nothing more than a AAAA organization.

RAYS TEAM TRIVIA

Total # of Rays in 2014 - 43

# of new Rays in 2014 - 17

Best score in 2014 - April 19 vs. Yankees 16-1

Worst score in 2014 - September 25 at Red Sox 11-1

Border color that worked best with this team - Green

Border color that worked least with this team - Red

Position on last year's list - #4 = DOWN 3

Let's take a look at the first half of the 2014 Tampa Bay Rays with the manager's card leading the way.

PURPLE

GREEN

BLUE

I'll be back tomorrow with Part 2.  As usual, your thoughts are always welcome and encouraged.

Thanx for reading.