Rays - Signed Hawpe

Tampa Bay Rays - Signed OF Brad Hawpe to a minor-league contract.

While Hawpe hasn’t been bad offensively this season, unlike fellow former Rockie cliffer Garrett Atkins, dropping to an OPS+ of 100 made it too hard for Colorado to stomach the defense.  It’s much easier to overlook a player with less range than Ashton Kutcher when he’s got an OPS+ of 128.  After the down season, it became obvious that Colorado would not pick up Hawpe’s option, so the team tried to get something for him.  Nobody would give up something for Hawpe, so they tried asking for nothing.  Nothing proved to be too sweet a deal, so the Rockies released Hawpe in order to get less-than-nothing, Hawpe’s going rate.

Once freed of the prospect of having to pay a million bucks for Hawpe the rest of the season, there was finally some interest there.  The Rays were the team to take a low-risk flier on Hawpe, smart considering that, thanks to Pat Burrell not being able to hit in the AL, “Tampa DH” has been one of the weakest playoff club spots the last couple of years (2010 Tampa DHs:  239/314/374, 2009 Tampa DHs:  244/337/404).  Good rule of thumb:  When you’re an AL team and seriously consider giving up the DH spot for the pitcher in certain situations, your DH situation is in need of repair.

2010 ZIPS Projection - Brad Hawpe
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                AB    R    H  2B  3B  HR  RBI   BB   SO  SB   BA  OBP  SLG
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Year-to-Date   259   24   66  21   2   7   37   36   68   2 .255 .343 .432

Rest-of-Year    81   10   21   5   1   3   13   13   25   0 .258 .358 .448
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Total          340   34   87  26   3  10   50   49   93   2 .255 .347 .436

Year-to-date totals include minor-league translations, if applicable.