Rays Anderson Celebrates 30th Birthday
Follow @Steve_Kinsella1Tampa, FL – The Tampa Bay Rays continue their summer camp training in preparation of their July 24th season opener.
Reliever Nick Anderson celebrated his 30th birthday today and spoke to the media via video conference after today’s workout.
While everyone isn’t together at the same time, Anderson spoke of the excitement the workouts have brought. “Everyone’s back here under the same roof and getting after it.” He said. “Everybody is excited we all just want to be safe and have the best outcome, but we’re all excited to be back for sure.”
Anderson was acquired along with Trevor Richards from the Miami Marlins last July 31st in exchange for Jesus Sanchez and Ryne Stanek. With Tampa Bay he appeared in 23 games logging 21.1 innings and pitched to a 3-0 mark with a 2.11 ERA. He struck out an impressive 41 batters (17.3 K/9) while walking just a pair (0.8 BB/9).
“I could jump into a game tomorrow, it would be more a little bit on the recovery side of things that will take a couple of more weeks.” Anderson said, “I feel pretty good, my body feels good.” He added that the real issue comes on the recovery part of the equation. “Everybody still has to look toward the future. As nice as it would be to only have 60 games and say I can throw every game but the object of this game is to play as long as you can as well.”
The 2020 season will begin without fans in the stands. Anderson was asked how that would impact him. “I try to block everything out anyways. It’s kind of more that white noise for me. It is kind of nice to have a little bit of that white noise but we’ll see when we start playing without fans how it is.”
Obviously it is going to be a different vibe in 2020 without fans but Anderson really wants it to be as enjoyable for the fans who are at home watching.
