{"id":340508,"date":"2026-07-15T03:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T03:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/340508\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T03:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T03:57:11","slug":"taj-marchand-signs-deal-with-tampa-bay-rays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/340508\/","title":{"rendered":"Taj Marchand signs deal with Tampa Bay Rays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) \u2014 Taj Marchand is officially a member of the Tampa Bay Rays organization. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The James Island alum agreed to his first professional contract on Tuesday, signing with the team that made him the 33rd overall pick in the MLB Draft over the weekend. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The slot value for that pick as a signing bonus is just under 3 million dollars although there\u2019s been no official word from the team on what the exact number Marchand signed for.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The shortstop was considered one of the top players in the state the last few years after helping lead James Island to 3 straight 5A state championships. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">This past season he hit .531 with 13 homers and 45 RBI. He also struck out 32 batters in less than 20 innings of work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">There\u2019s no word on where Marchand will begin his pro career but it probably won\u2019t be long until he\u2019s suiting up for Tampa\u2019s Low-A team&#8230;the Charleston RiverDogs. <\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WCSC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) \u2014 Taj Marchand is officially a member of the Tampa Bay Rays organization. The James&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-340508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}