Brignac is about to head out of town after the Rays designated him for assignment- and the Rays would be lucky to get anything in return for him. He was once an extremely highly-touted prospect, hitting .321 with 24 home runs and 15 stolen bases in 2006 as he won the High-A California MVP Award and following it up with a .260 average, 17 homers, and 15 steals at Double-A the next year. He could do it all, showing a smooth stroke with great power for a shortstop, nice speed, and outstanding defense at shortstop, and the Rays were expecting him to be their shortstop for years to come. His made his full-season debut in the majors in a part-time role in 2010 and played well, hitting .256 with 8 home runs in 326 plate appearances, and the Rays traded away Jason Bartlett so he could be their starting shortstop. But since then, he has completely fallen apart. He still plays great defense, but he never muscled up as expected and never developed any plate discipline and now has just a .227/.268/.317 line (63 OPS+) in 716 major league plate appearances. Brignac still has some potential. He’s coming off a season at Triple-A where he set a career-high with 45 walks and a 11% walk rate and also slammed 8 home runs, and maybe he has finally turned a corner. However, the chances are that he’ll never hit well enough to even start in the major leagues and will be lucky to hold down a utility role. Reid Brignac’s career looked so promising- but at the end of the day, it looks like all of the talent we thought he had will never come to fruition and as Brignac departs, we’re left trying to comprehend what happened.

Hard to believe now, but Jeff Niemann was the 4th overall pick back in 2004, one round before the Rays selected Brignac. Since then, the big 6’9″ right-handed has frustrated Rays fans maybe even more than Brignac, showing tremendous potential but also unceasing inconsistency and a propensity for getting hurt. The Devil Rays almost should have known it right from the start- he underwent arthroscopic surgery in his elbow the fall before he was drafted and also dealt with groin problems over the course of his 2004 season at Rice University. In between, though, Niemann tied an NCAA Division I record by going an unbelievable 17-0. Niemann’s career has followed a similar pattern- but with every injury he has lost something and has performance has dropped. Once able to hit 97 MPH on his fastball to pair with a devastating slider, Niemann’s continued to dip lower and lower after every injury and his slider lost its bite, reducing Niemann’s potential from a frontline starter to a number four or five- when healthy. Niemann has been fine when he has been on the mound the last five years for the Rays, going 40-26 with a 4.08 ERA in 92 starts, 5 relief appearances, and 544.1 innings pitched for the Rays. At times, he has appeared to be every bit the pitcher the Rays thought he would be when they drafted him, including a stretch from June to August of 2011 where he went 7-0 with a 2.15 ERA in 10 starts to carry the team. But Niemann managed just a 6.08 ERA in his final 7 starts of 2011 and that has seemed to happen every time he has ever seemingly made a breakthrough. Whenever the Rays have believed in Niemann, suddenly he’d fall apart whether through an injury or simply poor performance. 2012 may have been an even better example: when healthy, he was great, managing a 3.08 ERA and a 34-12 in 8 starts and 38 innings pitched, but he went down with a broken bone in his leg in May and then a shoulder issue in September and wound up giving the Rays very little on the season. Now, he Rays may have finally run out of patience. Unlike Brignac, they don’t have to trade Niemann immediately, but if he’s healthy and Roberto Hernandez and Chris Archer out-pitch him in spring training, the Rays will trade him for whatever they can get. It’s sad to see a career that once had so much promise about to come to such an undistinguished end. Maybe Niemann can finally stay healthy and carve out a solid career for himself a starter at the back end of a major leaguer rotation. But we’ve seen Niemann struggle through season after season of never-ending struggles, and at this point the Rays may just have to move on.

It’s unbelievable how quickly and how easily former top prospects can fall apart. Five years ago, the Rays could have gotten one and a half season of a star outfielder for Brignac and Niemann. Now, the Rays would be fortunate to get a pair of lottery ticket minor leaguers. Best of luck to Brignac and Niemann wherever they end up, but unfortunately for them, they will be remembered in Tampa Bay as only disappointments who could never live up to the expectations set for them and gave Rays fans nothing but transient glimpses of ability that could never materialize in the long-term.

Bay turned 34 in September and is not the same player who posted a .280/.375/.519 line with 181 home runs, 30 per season, from 2004 until 2009. But he is not as bad as he was the past three years with the Mets, where injuries and the pressure to perform caused him to completely implode. Bay is a left fielder and the Rays have at-bats to offer him. He has been injury prone and he’ll have the opportunity to play some designated hitter. And being in Tampa Bay on a minor league deal or a low-value major league contract, the pressure will be completely off of him. The Rays are not asking for much. If Bay hit 15 home runs (the pace he was at per 162 games when healthy from 2010 to 2012), steals double-digit bases (like he did each year from 2008 to 2011), gets on base at a solid clip (Bay had a 10.6% walk rate even with the Mets), and stays healthy while splitting time between left field and DH, the Rays would be thrilled. Jason Bay could finally end up in Tampa Bay, and it could be best for everyone involved.

On July 31st, 2008, the Rays reportedly acquired outfielder Jason Bay from the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for a pair of prospects that are now more familiar faces for Rays fans: shortstop Reid Brignac and right-hander Jeff Niemann. The deal fell through, and Bay instead went to the Boston Red Sox. Would it have been better for the Rays to have made that deal?

In 200 games between 2008 and 2009 for the Red Sox, Jason Bay was excellent, posting a .274/.380/.534 line with 41 doubles, 45 homers, and 156 RBI in 849 plate appearances. Even though his offensive numbers would have been depressed at least slightly by Tropicana Field, the Rays really could have used his bat in their lineup during those years. Bay was certainly much better than the Gabe Gross-Eric Hinske platoon that the Rays threw out to right field in 2008 and the Gross-Gabe Kapler platoon that they had in 2009. Gross hit just .053 in 23 playoff plate appearances in 2008, and basically everyone else the Rays put in right field (Hinske, Rocco Baldelli, pre-breakout Ben Zobrist) hit terribly as well. Bay posted a .341/.471/.634 line for the Red Sox in the 2008 Postseason, slamming 3 home runs and driving in 9 in 11 games. We’ll never know how Bay would have hit for the Rays in the 2008 World Series, and maybe, even probably, it would not have been enough anyway. But having Bay in the lineup would have undoubtedly given the Rays a better chance to win. And maybe with a championship banner hanging in the Trop, the Rays stadium and fan situation could have been better.

2009 was a lost year for the Rays. Bay almost assuredly would not have changed that. And then there’s the matters of Brignac and Niemann. Brignac was a valuable bench player for the Rays in 2009 and 2010 before falling apart in 2011 and early in 2012 before possibly making strides at Triple-A now. Niemann has been a solid back-of-the-rotation option for the Rays the past five seasons, going 40-26 with a 4.11 ERA in 91 starts and 5 relief appearances and although he has dealt with bouts of inconsistency, he has carried the Rays at times, including a 6-0 record and a 1.71 ERA for the Rays from July 2nd to August 16th, 2011. Brignac and Niemann have given the Rays contributions over the course of several seasons- Bay would have been valuable for the Rays for half a season and he only could have been the difference for one series, the World Series. Even in retrospect, the question is still out there: should the Rays have made the deal to acquire Bay?

The Rays had a mostly quiet trade deadline in 2012. Only time will tell whether that was the right decision.