There wasn’t much of redeeming value tonight, so this is probably going to be brief.
When You Don’t Got It, You Don’t Got It: And James Shields absolutely didn’t have it tonight. He had some very brief flickers of his good stuff tonight, but mostly it was one big struggle for him. The plate was jumping around on him, his stuff didn’t have any bite to it, and the Red Sox knocked him all over the yard in chasing him from the game in the 4th inning. A far cry from last Sunday’s performance.
On a night like tonight, you just hope that your guy can get enough outs to give the team a chance to win. That certainly didn’t happen tonight. Jamie’s a pro, though. He’ll come back ready to do it again on Friday.
O-Pen-ing Up Old Wounds: The past few days, we’ve started to see a few things out of the bullpen that are familiar reminders of days gone by. Lots of walks and deep counts and the inability to keep the Rays in a ballgame. When Jamie left, there was still that flicker of hope that the Rays might be able to mount something. By the time J.P. Howell was done, the flicker was almost entirely gone. Let’s hope that this is simply a rough patch that works itself out and the bullpen is ready to set ‘em down again in the coming days.
A Few Offensive Highlights: Aki had two hits (including a home run), Navi delivered two more hits, and Gabe Gross hit his first home run as a Ray. Gross in particular had a solid night offensively, walking twice as well. He had some real good at bats out there, so here’s to hoping that he’s starting to break out of his slump.
I’m Not Going to Go Crazy Here: Look, the Red Sox are a good team, and they’ve given us a spanking these past two nights. Maybe this is a little it of a wake-up call for our young Rays. Everyone’s been saying that the team is for real – well, the real proof if they are for real is to see how they bounce back from adversity. A win tomorrow would help to cauterize the wound a bit. Losing 2-out-of-3 in Boston isn’t horrible, especially after the big sweep last weekend.
There will be a lot of baseball to be played over the next few months and plenty more chances for the Rays to get revenge. The team just hasn’t had it the past few nights (I’m sure the cold, wet, New England weather doesn’t help), but they are bound to have a few patches like this during the season. The telling point will be how they come out tomorrow and in the next series against Toronto. Just like they can’t get too high after a win, they can’t allow themselves to get too low after a loss, no matter how bad that loss is.
May 4th, 2008 at 5:28 am
I don’t want to get into last years “We did out best, There just a better Team, We’ll get ‘em next time” attitude. You know if we win tonight it’s not 1 out of 3, No Sir, It’s 4 Out of 6 or we loose it’s we won 50% against the 2nd best team because we are the best. Joe needs to tell the Boys that. My wife just looked over my shoulder and is laughing. She said that’s a lot better than what I said last night True you need to look at the big picture and not just one game. So let’s go play a good one tonight. We also have to give a little slack to Kaz to night. He has not thrown more than 80 pitches in a spring or minor league game so far. We need him to give us 6 or 7 good innings but more important we need to give him 6 or 7 runs.