By: TJ Hartnett

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

The Tampa Bay Rays must know something about Corey Dickerson that they are not sharing with the world.

Perhaps they have information proving that he was the mastermind behind the Bernie Madoff scandal. That remains to be seen, but for some unknown reason Tampa Bay designated their All-Star leadoff hitter for assignment on Saturday after they acquired first baseman CJ Cron from the Los Angeles Angels.

To clue in the casual baseball fan, a MLB’s Major League 25-man roster is culled from a 40-man roster, where they ostensibly keep their 40 best players, including minor leaguers who aren’t protected from the Rule 5 draft (which is a whole different thing, just Google it).

Fourty is max, so if a team like the Rays has 40 players on that roster and acquire someone else without trading away one of those 40, then they have to maneuver in some way to make room.

This can range from putting someone on the disabled list to, as Tampa Bay has done with Dickerson, designate someone for assignment.

Basically, they’ve put themselves in a position where they will either need to make another trade or release Dickerson altogether.

The reason this is a little crazy is because despite a second half dropoff in 2017, Corey Dickerson finished the year with a batting average of .282 and 27 home runs or, for the sabermetrically inclined, he clocked in with an OPS of .815 and an OPS+ of 120.

In other words, he had a very good season. I mentioned he was an All-Star; he actually started the game at DH over the likes of Nelson Cruz; such was the season he was having in the first half.

However, the Rays have essentially declared that they don’t see a need for him in 2018. So, again, I can’t see how this makes sense unless the Rays know something we, the prone-to-snap-judgements public, don’t know.

It’s curious because if they weren’t interested in retaining Dickerson’s services, he would have been a clear candidate for a trade. Now if they want to trade him, they’ve worked against themselves. Any interested party could conceivably just wait it out and see if the Rays just release him outright. Then they’ll just need to spend money to pick him up, instead of spending prospects.

I can’t imagine it getting to that point. In fact, I have to assume (or hope?) that Tampa has got something up their sleeve.

Maybe they’ve already got a trade for Dickerson in place that will reveal itself in the coming days. Possibly they have some other trade coming down the pipeline that will free up a space on the 40-man so that Dickerson can be placed back on it. This seems unlikely, because why risk a player the likes of Dickerson in this particular situation? It’s feasible, since the Rays have 10 days to reinstate him, just improbable.

Were the Rays really that concerned about Dickerson’s second half slump?  I’ll grant you that it was more in line with his first season in Tampa and that the All-Star first half of 2017 is more of an outlier of his time in Florida, but his numbers would still be appealing to someone looking for a DH or outfielder.

Or is it something more sinister? Could it be that Corey Dickerson is harboring a dark secret and the Rays discovered it? Fangraphs.com’s Jeff Sullivan seems to think so, tweeting “this move makes plenty of sense when you recall that Corey Dickerson is the zodiac killer” after the news broke.

Whatever the case, this story is just breaking, so stay tuned to The Southern Sports Edition for any news about the Rays’ plans. Or Corey Dickerson’s crimes, maybe.