Matthew Joyce played his first 92 Games of his Major League career with the Detroit Tigers (2008), and he would be traded after to Tampa, where he spent most of 2009 honing his craft in the Minors. 

Alex Cobb was a fourth round pick in 2006, and he would work his way up the ranks to the big club in 2011, where he would start nine games, impressing the brass enough to be named a member of the starting rotation early in 2012.

The best three seasons of Jason Bartlett’s career were with the Tampa Bay Rays (2008-2010), the second of what would be three Major League teams that he would play for.

After having been named an All-Star four times in his career, Fred McGriff was left available in the 1998 Expansion Draft, and the Tampa Bay Rays were able to have the hometown star as an inaugural Ray.