Where There's A Wil, There's A Ray.

On Sunday, the Tampa Bay Rays officially called up Wil Myers. Normally, a baseball team calling up a player whose Triple-A season reads well enough (after a slow start, he finishes this minor league stint with a .283/.354/.514 line, with 14 homers, 57 RBI and 7 stolen bases in 288 plate appearances) would merit a decent amount of attention without going overboard. But, you see, this is no ordinary call up. It may not create the same frenzy as the Harper/Trout/Machado debuts did, but believe me, Myers will make an immediate impact for a Rays team that could see this season end in a similar fashion as 2008, which culminated in their first trip to the World Series.

This might be a tough image to handle for most Royals fans, though.

When the Rays acquired Myers with Jake Odorizzi, Mike Montgomery, and Patrick Leonard from the Kansas City Royals this offseason, it was viewed as the biggest coup in baseball since the Mark Teixeira trade between the Braves and Rangers in 2007, which vastly skewed in Texas's favor while leaving Atlanta with mostly nothing to show for it. The Rays sent James Shields and Wade Davis to the Royals, and while the two have been doing pretty well for them, most baseball fans felt that the Royals overpaid to the extreme, considering that Myers and Odorizzi were supposed to be part of the next pennant winner in Kansas City. A little over 6 months later, after Odorizzi's debut in St. Petersburg went less spectacular than expected (he was sent back to the minors a few days ago, after an 8.03 ERA in 12 1/3 innings convinced the team he might not be ready for major league action), the trade's starting to look a little more balanced. The thinking is that Myers's callup is going to blow it out of the water. While his numbers at Durham are nothing like they were in Omaha last season (.314/.387/.600 with 37 home runs and 109 RBI, which netted him the prestiguous Minor League Player of the Year award), he's more than proven over the past year and a half that Triple-A pitching isn't good enough for him. Taking a look at the Rays' upcoming schedule to round out the first half of the season will give us a good indication of how Wil will handle this next level: they face the Red Sox for 3 games and the Yankees for 4 on the road, then face the Blue Jays for 3 and the Tigers for 3 at home to finish up June. July will probably see a deceiving spike in the young Myers's stats: before the All-Star break, the team faces the Astros on the road, then hosts the White Sox, Twins, and Houston again (all of whom are under .500) to wrap things up.

Still, both of these hurdles will give us a clear indication of what Wil Myers is really about. He'll get his first taste of major league pitching against 4 teams that he'll be facing in Octobers to come, and after that, he'll be able to relax with teams that are a bit further away from contending. Unfortunately, the kid will have a heavy weight placed on his shoulders right out of the gate. Myers is supposed to be the spark that lights a fire under the collective asses of Tampa's offense. Third baseman Evan Longoria is always a strong producer when healthy, and as we've stated on this very blog, a Myers-Longoria tandem in the lineup could soon give Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder a run for their money as the best 1-2 punch in the heart of any lineup today. But beyond the oft-injured corner infielder and the sight-unseen young outfielder, the Rays have an absolutely abysmal offense: even though they rank no lower than 11th in any offensive stat, the individual numbers will make you pine for the days of Wade Boggs and Fred McGriff. Longoria leads the team in...well, everything. Nobody else really comes close. Ben Zobrist, one of the most underappreciated players in baseball, is quietly having another productive season at .270/.361/.393, and James Loney continues to amaze in his first full season outside of Los Angeles, but with players like Luke Scott (.240/.340/.388) and Sam Fuld (.180/.250/.258) still on the roster, no amount of mashing from Longo, nor any consistency from Zobrist or Loney, can disguise the regression to come.

He seems pretty unconcerned with all of that.

Thankfully, Myers is on his way. If you'll remember, the Rays used to be the Devil Rays when they first began play in 1998, and for the first decade of their existence, they were little more than a punching bag in the AL East. After a few consecutive drafts wherein they garnered some high picks, the talent finally began to spill over into the majors, with David Price and Longoria both being called up as reinforcements in 2008, which led to a Cinderella run that's only been bested by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2011. While today's Rays are in 4th place entering play today, they're 36-33 on the season and only 5 games behind the division-leading Red Sox, and if anyone remembers that 2011 season outside of what the Cards did, you'll understand that this lead is anything but insurmountable. He may not carry the hype of a Profar or Taveras, but Wil Myers's presence in the majors is going to be felt almost immediately.