Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill into law on Friday that gives local governments access to $13 million annually in funding for the construction or renovation of a professional sports facility. To be eligible, the sports facility must be owned and operated by a local government or owned by a private entity that’s located on land owned by a local government.

Under the general terms of the new law, the Tampa Bay Rays would be eligible as a beneficiary of the new funding stream, as Tropicana Field is owned by the City of St. Petersburg. Same for the Miami Marlins, which play in a ballpark built largely with Miami-Dade County bonds. Then there are the nine teams that play in spring training facilities in Florida (Phillies, Blue Jays, Astros, Rigers, Rays, Pirates, Orioles, Mets and Twins) and the 14 minor league teams in Florida that play in a ballpark owned by — or on land owned by — the local government.

But an amendment to the bill added as it made its way through the Florida legislature carves out facilities used by MLB and MiLB franchises unless and until MLB changes its rules to permit Cuban ballplayers to sign as free agents if they defect from Cuba directly to the United States. Under current rules, MLB requires players to defect and establish residency in a non-U.S. country before coming to the United States to sign as a free agent.

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Last week, I wrote that the best suitors for David Price were primarily lower revenue clubs who might not be able to afford his 2015 arbitration raise, leading to the possibility that Price could be traded both this summer and again this winter. Then, on Sunday, the Cardinals made that column obsolete. On the same day, they placed both Michael Wacha and Jaime Garcia on the disabled list, with Wacha’s injury having a pretty open-ended timeline and raising the question of whether or not St. Louis can count on him returning this year.

Suddenly, the team with the most buying power of any team in baseball now has a glaring and immediate need for an impact starting pitcher. And David Price ending up in St. Louis almost feels inevitable.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

In this installment of the Prospect Watch, I’m checking in on three players who impressed me last year and are off to big starts this year in the short-season New York-Penn League.

Summary
Wick has two plus tools and he’s laying waste to the NYPL early on.

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Mike Trout has been baseball’s best and most dominant player since 2012, so a little earlier this year, when he encountered something of a slump, it was a newsworthy event. Trout seemed almost perfect in all things, so it raised more than a few eyebrows when he started striking out fairly often. Before Trout, there was no Trout, but between 2009 – 2011, no one accumulated more WAR than Evan Longoria. He was perhaps baseball’s best young player, and it’s not like he fell off a cliff after that; Trout was just better. But Longoria was an awesome young superstar, and he, too, seemed impervious to trouble. It would’ve been hard to imagine Longoria going through hard times.

Yet here we are now, and Longoria’s hit some hard times. Fortunately or unfortunately for him, it’s been partially masked by the whole Rays team dropping out of the race, and it’s not like Longoria’s been bad, but something’s been missing, something of great importance. He’s still just 28, so it’s probably too soon to talk about a decline, but to this point Longoria’s been without his greatest strength. And it’s a mystery as to why that is.

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The Rays may be in a new position when it comes to this year’s trade deadline. Since their playoff odds have dropped more than any other team’s since the beginning of the season and are now close to 5%, it’s at least hard to see them as buyers. Then again, they haven’t made a ton of in-season acquisitions in their more competitive past, and their team is built for 2015 as much as it was built for this year — it’s likely that their transition from buyers to sellers may come without many big moves.

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The Mariners and Rays played a Wednesday matinee that featured extraordinarily little in the way of offense. Following the conclusion, there was this simple throwaway tweet:

#Mariners fall to Rays 2-0. Tampa had 3 hits, Mariners 2. No idea why this one took 3 hours, 21 minutes.

— Greg Johns (@GregJohnsMLB) May 14, 2014

Seems long. Seems like too much. An isolated instance is an isolated instance, and you shouldn’t focus too much on anything unless it repeats, but it turns out, for the Rays, this is a reflection of the norm.

Granted, there was a variety of reasons for Wednesday’s duration. Mariners starter Brandon Maurer struggled, and Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon went and got himself into an on-field argument. The day before, the Rays won 2-1, and that game took less than three hours. But a few days ago, the Rays lost a nine-inning affair 6-5, and they played for 228 minutes. Not long before that, they lost a nine-inning affair 6-3, and they played for 250minutes. In terms of footspeed, the 2014 Rays presumably are not the slowest team in baseball history. In terms of game pace, they most probably are.

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David Price had one of the best starts of his career on Tuesday. With any start, you always have to consider the opponent, since it’s the opponent who’s responsible for doing anything with the pitches that get thrown, but at least by the numbers, Price was absolutely outstanding in Seattle, turning in a walk-free complete game with a dozen strikeouts. He was sufficiently dominant that he was allowed to handle the ninth inning of a one-run game, and he closed the deal with a 96 mile-per-hour swinging strikeout. Not that it was the swinging strikeouts for which people will remember the effort.

Closing the bottom of the first, Price froze Corey Hart with an inside running fastball. That was the first of eight called strikeouts Price would record, giving him twice as many called strikeouts as whiffs. It was tied for the highest called-strikeout start of the 2014 season, and while most called third strikes are the result of a hitter being caught off guard, in the end Price’s called strikeouts were pretty similar.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Summary
This 2013 2nd-rounder is a unique mix of skills and drawbacks.

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Yunel Escobar apparently is not into playing hard to get. He reportedly “commandeered” Andrew Friedman during spring training to begin extension talks. Those talks led to the contract extension announced this past weekend: $5 million for 2015 — which replaced the $5 million club option from his prior contract — $7 million in 2016 and a 2017 club option for $7 million, with a $1 million buyout. Given the apparent rise in the price of wins, the deal is almost a no-brainer for the team. It almost sets aside the question whether Escobar fits into the team’s future depth chart while simultaneously raising some curious questions about the value of clubhouse chemistry.

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The fastest pitch Mark Buehrle threw Wednesday was just shy of 84 miles per hour. For Buehrle, in early April, that’s not out of the ordinary, and he’s long been a guy who’s managed to make it work in the low- to mid-80s. What was a little more out of the ordinary was everything else. Armed with his usual stuff, Buehrle struck out 11 of 30 Tampa Bay batters. He was a fastball away from completing a shutout, and Buehrle himself was taken by surprise by what he was able to do.

Only one other time in his extraordinary career has Buehrle’s strikeout total reached double digits. He whiffed a dozen Mariners all the way back in April 2005, in a game that lasted all of 99 minutes. So, this was Buehrle’s second-highest strikeout total ever. Yet he generated just a dozen swings and misses. That’s a high number, but not as high as the strikeouts would suggest. In 28 career starts, Buehrle has missed more than 12 bats. In another 14, he’s missed exactly 12 bats. Buehrle was unusually unhittable without being unusually unhittable, and the reason for that is the very reason for Buehrle’s continued success in the bigs.

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