Pitching is Rays priority

Posted Dec 8, 2009 by Roger Mooney

Updated Dec 8, 2009 at 12:25 PM

Not that they wouldn’t love to have Halladay to the front of their rotation, they just can’t afford him.

“Most of our energy is being spent on the relief-pitcher market,” Rays executive vice president Andrew Friedman said Monday. “But we have a couple of other things out there that we’re having conversations about. Some of it’s looking ahead to future years, and some of it would have an impact in 2010. But I think we’re approaching these meetings as we have every other (Winter Meetings), with one eye on the present and one eye on the future.”

Friedman said his top priority when he took over the GM role in October 2005 was to create as much pitching depth throughout the organization as he possibly could.

While two of his biggest moves during the last year involved pitchers (Edwin Jackson and Scott Kazmir) has protected the arms in the organization like a mother bear protecting her cub.

“It can be fleeting,” Friedman said, “and if you ever feel like you have too much pitching, you wake up one day and you’re trying to trade for it, so we’re extremely cognizant and sensitive to that. And it doesn’t mean that we won’t make a trade that involves pitching, but it’s not nearly as easy to do as it used to be.”

- Roger Mooney