Hot Stove Report: Tampa Bay Rays now in on Ike Davis, Tejada Pissed at Mets

     Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reported yesterday that the Tampa Bay Rays are interested in a OF Matt Joyce for 1B Ike Davis swap. The interest stems from the fact that both players have disappointed in their respective current homes and both are slated to make roughly the same amount of money through the arbitration process this off-season. 

     Joyce this season hit .235 with 18 HR and 47 RBI. His offensive production was hampered a bit by a bit of back luck with a low .251 BABIP which was 30 points below his career average. STEAMER expects him bounce back a little and post a .249 AVG with 16 HR and 57 RBI in 2014.

(Meh....pass. Joyce has never hit over .277 in his major league career and has only topped .300 once in his professional career when he was with the Oneonta Tigers of the NY-Penn League (SS-A) back in 2005. You would expect someone like him to have more power but he tops out at 15+ HR ability. I'd rather pursue the Nick Markakis avenue even if it costs me an additional piece, such as a Tyler Pill/Cory Mazzoni, in order to get the Orioles to cover some of the salary.)

Not much else going on at the moment. The league seems to be in a holding pattern until the Winter Meetings come around in 3 weeks. The only other newsworthy story from this weekend is that Ruben Tejada may file a grievance against the Mets for purposely holding him in AAA to prevent him earning an additional year of service time. 

According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, even though the Las Vegas 51's season ended on September 7th, Tejada was not called up until 3 days later when conveniently he could finish the MLB season out but end up 1 day shy of earning a full year of service time. The shortage of 1 day prevents Tejada from becoming free agent eligible after the 2016 giving the ballclub an extra year of control.

(Sigh...while I understand the business behind service times and Super 2 cut-off points, in Tejada's case, it is clear that the team does not view him as a core player let alone someone who deserves to be on the MLB squad. On the flip side, as much as the Mets are already disappointed and down on Tejada now he's going to pursue a grievance? Talk about throwing salt on the wound.)