Rays Notes: Rays at MLB Fan Cave, Rays Win Minor League Awards, Dave Martinez

The Rays relaxed in New York City on Friday as they looked to wash away the memories of a tough series in Baltimore, and Evan Longoria, Rich Thompson, and Matt Moore all headed down to the MLB Fan Cave. Here’s the Twitter recap.

Welcome, to Twitter, Matt, and glad to hear that everyone had a good time at the Fan Cave.

Back to baseball. Baseball America released their All-Stars, Players of the Year, and Managers of the Year for each minor league level and several Rays made the cut. Chris Archer was a Triple-A All-Star, heading down to Short Season-A, right-handers Taylor Guerrieri and Jeff Ames were pitchers for the All-Star team with Renegades manager and ex-Rays player Jared Sandberg winning the Manager of the Year Award as he captained the Renegades to their first championship since 1999. Guerrieri was also named the Short Season-A level’s pitcher of the year after posting an 0.87 ERA with 45 strikeouts versus 5 walks in 12 starts. And down to Rookie ball, lefty Blake Snell made the All-Star team as a starter while right-hander Nick Sawyer was the only All-Star reliever at the level. Congrats to everyone on their awards. All these pitchers and even Sandberg as manager have outstanding talent, and it will be fun to see how they develop moving forward.

And finally, Astros beat writer Brian McTaggart wrote about the Astros interviewing Rays bench coach Dave Martinez for their managerial position. We’ve heard nothing but good about Dave during his time with the Rays, and good luck to him as the Astros decide which direction to go in to find their manager.