This Week in Rays Baseball: Decisions to be Made on Peralta, Cubs Set to Hire Maddon, and More

The Tampa Bay Rays will wait until Monday to make their option decision on reliever Joel Peralta, the Tampa Bay Times’ Marc Topkin tweeted. They’ll also be making other 40-man decisions, since Matt Moore and Jerry Sands need to be reinstated from the 60-day disabled list, and their roster is currently full. If the Rays choose to exercise Peralta’s $2.5M option, they’ll have options at the same price for 2016 and 2017 as well. Peralta is coming off a season in which he posted a 4.41 ERA, and the Rays could decide to let him go to save a bit of money and clear a roster spot for a younger player. What follows are a handful of links from this week past.

Hot-Stove: Rays Pick Up Ben Zobrist’s $7.5 MM Option, Cubs Fire Rick Renteria

The Rays officially announced that they have exercised their one-year, $7.5MM club option on All-Star utility-man Ben Zobrist.

Looking Backward While Moving Forward: Rays Drop Season Finale, 7-2

Put a fork in it, the Tampa Bay Rays’ most disappointing season since 2007 came to a close in disappointing fashion, with the Rays falling to the Cleveland Indians 7-2. The Rays ended the season with a 77-85 record, and their lowest offensive output since the Devil Rays days (more on that below). Alex Cobb took the mound against Indians starter TJ House and allowed ten hits, including a rare two homer second inning. Meanwhile House, while lasting only 49 pitches, proved to be effective, ultimately limiting the Rays to one run in five innings.

Looking Backward While Moving Forward: Alex Colome Impressive in Rays 2-0 Win

I thought it would be interesting to compare the three pitchers vying for the fifth starter spot next season (assuming that Jeremy Hellickson isn’t traded in the off-season). In doing so, I looked that Colome, Hellickson, and Karns’ body of work over the last 30 days.

Looking Backward While Moving Forward: Rays Fall Despite Strong Effort By Archer

Going into Friday night’s game, Rays starter Chris Archer set one goal for himself in this, his final start of the season: pitch strongly. And over the course of 7-2/3 innings of baseball, Archer put together his strongest outing of the season — holding the Indians to one run on three hits, while striking out six. Unfortunately for him,Jose Ramirez took advantage of a first inning mistake pitch for the only run of the game, and the Rays had to butt heads with the 2014 Cy Young Award contender, Corey Kluber.