I think every trade I've made for Rays the last half year involves trading Shane Baz. Nothing has changed. Doesn't fool anyone. Misses no bats. Has poor command. He throws hard...so does every 18 year old on the scouting circuit. 95 RHP is impressive, but you have to have movement, command, and deception. Baz has only movement. He has an opportunity to improve, but if I was running the front office, get a great CF so that you can get Simpson to the Show in LF, keep Littell in the 3 spot, and give some MLB guys a chance to fail. That includes Mead, who looks terrible to me, .750 batting average or not. Somebody wake me up on him when he finally hits a ball hard. He always had a weird throwing motion, and now he has moved that wird motion to the batters box. Here's some advice to Mead: if it's unnecessary and uncomfortable, don't do it. His batting stance is unnecessary and uncomfortable, and is a gimmick to "fix things" that were never fixed to start with. I hope the Rays move on from Baz and Mead whilethe iron is moderately hot, because they are DFA candidates by September.

I'm not sold on Deluca (or even C.Simpson) as the future at CF, but I don't want to trade Baz for Doyle to fix the position either. 4 years of Baz should be worth a lot more than a defense first CF. Also, Baz isn't a Patino situation. There's no way he's a DFA candidate at year end. Last year was a partial season for him after coming back from TJS. He pitched 14 games overall with a sub 4 xERA (3.62). He needs to get his K rate back up and if he does, he should be fine. If he doesn't, then maybe he's a middle of the rotation arm going forward instead of a potential TOR. You won't convince me he's going to fall off so much this year that he's not good enough to be a starter for any team in a league desperate for SP. Mead on the other hand... I agree the Rays need to trade him while he's hot. He's not their kind of player, even if he is having a good ST (and he's hitting the ball hard too). Even if he hits 120 wRC+ this year, the Rays will still hate him as a player.