If you want to destroy Edwin Jackson (whoa)
Pull this thread as he walks away (as he walks away)
Watch him unravel, he’ll soon be naked (whoa)
Lyin’ on the floor, lyin’ on the floor
He’s come undone
Undone (The Sweater Song): No, his offense didn’t do him any favors (we’ll get to that later), but Edwin Jackson did what Edwin Jackson does – inexplicably and out of nowhere, he simply lost it on the mound. He actually did a very nice job of navigating through some problems in the first couple of innings (and was burned a little bit by a great piece of hitting by Dustin Pedroia), and I actually felt pretty good about his outing through the first 3 innings.
And then it happened. “Nuke” allowed a two-run, bases-empty home run to Brandon Moss and the floodgates opened. 6 straight Red Sox reached base safely at that point, and when the inning was over, 5 more runs were on the board.
Edwin has GOT to stop letting one bad pitch ruin his entire night. It happens all of the time. If he makes that one bad pitch and gives up a home run, he’s utterly useless for the rest of the game. He starts losing the strikezone, he starts to overthrow, and the other teams can just sit back and tee-off once he inevitably delivers a meatball right down the middle. By the time the 4th inning was over, there was this overwhelming feeling that this game was over, and your starting pitching can NEVER leave you with that.
Wasted Opportunites: The Rays left 8 men on base – and many of those were left on in tandem in situations where the Rays could’ve taken control of the game (or gotten back into it). In the second, back-to-back walks to lead off the inning had the Rays in an excellent position to score some runs. 2 outs later, a Jason Bartlett single ended the inning when Evan Longoria was thrown out at home.
Then, in the third, the first two got on again in Aki and Carl Crawford, and what happened? Three straight strikeouts of Gomes, Pena, and Longoria and the Rays were done again. The offense has no one to blame but itself for this one.
The First Slump: Evan Longoria is officially in the first slump of his big-league career. He’s 1 for his last 12, and if you extend that out futher, he has struck out in 11 of his last 21 at bats. We knew the strikeouts would be an issue, but he’s now at a Gomes-esque 30% rate of striking out. Let’s see how he’s able to bounce back from this; the Rays need his bat and if he stops hitting, the Rays offense will stop scoring runs.
Let’s NOT Do That Again: Jonny Gomes should never bat third again. He was brutal. It was a vintage Gomes performance tonight, and further proof as to why he rarely plays against righties.
Coming Alive: Jason Bartlett is very quietly raising his average, and it’s not up to .240. He hit two nice ones tonight, a line drive single the other way and a double down the left-field line. He even walked for just the 3rd time this year! Could he finally be coming around?
I Stand Corrected: Maybe Kurt Birkins doesn’t suck as much as I’ve always thought he did.
Jason Hammel… on the other hand looked like someone who had just been demoted to the bullpen and was sulking about it. Not a very pretty outing by him.
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
The glass half full = 2 out of three would be verrrry sweet. It will be interesting tonight and especially tomorrow seeing how Kaz will rebound for his opening day start. If I sound calm, don’t believe it. I’m just trying to recover from last nights NERVOUS BREAK DOWN.
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Here is the thing. Had we scored in either of those two innings where we had the first two batters on 1st and 2nd with no outs, I really think that Jackson wouldn’t have pressed as much to get the outs in the next inning. But we showed some resiliency and came back late in the game to almost steal a win.
A rain delay today means we could have Shields and Kazmir on the same day.