Pat Burrell to sign with Tampa Bay Rays

Pat Burrell may not be as hot of a free agent signing as the New York Yankees trio of CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett, and Mark Teixeira, but he should make a splash with his new team. As of right now, reports are coming out that that team will be the Tampa Bay Rays. I guess the Rays figured that if you couldn’t beat a team with Burrell, they might as well have Burrell for a 2 year, $16 million contract.

It seems like this would be a very good fit for Burrell to become the designated hitter for the Rays. Tampa Bay had the 3rd best ERA in the Majors, so they were definitely not looking to revamp their young rotation. The Rays do need some help on offense where they were 13th in runs scored (774) and slugging percentage (0.422). This might not seem bad, but when you are in a divisional races with the Red Sox (3rd in both categories) and the Yankees, who just added Teixeira to bolster their offense, something has to be done.

Enter Pat Burrell at the age of 32. Burrell does not hit for average with a career at 0.257, however, he offsets that with almost 100 walks, 31 homeruns, and 103 runs batted in per year. In the Phillies Championship run last year, Pat hit 0.250, 33 homeruns and 86 RBIs. Burrell still has a couple of good years left.