Maybe I should go back to not writing stuff on the website, because the team was doing just fine without me around. :)
No, no… 3 weeks after my daughter was born, I’ve finally got things under control enough in my life to try to get back to regular writing for you guys. There’s been so much that’s happened since Angelica was born, I’m a little sad I didn’t get to talk about it with you all. I’ll try to get a post up in a few days to give you my opinions on everything that went down while I was gone.
But that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to read what I have to say about last night’s very lethargic loss to the Astros, so let’s get to it:
Yawn: They say that a team always looks lethargic or lazy when they come up upon a good pitcher. And though our biggest “Thing To Watch For” in the pregame was a letdown by the team following the big-time sweep of the Cubs, it’s hard to tell if the Rays problems were lethargy or the fact that they came upon a good pitcher.
Though I suspect it’s a little bit of both, I’m inclined to lean towards Roy Oswalt being that good last night. His fastball had some serious bite on it, and the balls that the Rays were hitting were typically out of the strike zone pitcher’s pitches. (The best example of which would be B.J. Upton’s single in the first inning. That ball was practically in the dirt and he golfed it for a base hit.
After that first inning, the Rays mustered a whole lot of nothing against the Astros’ ace. Kudos to him for settling down and stopping our offense. He definitely had it working and the Rays needed more out of Matt Garza than they got if they were going to win.
Don’t Get Me Wrong… Garza wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but he just wasn’t good enough to win. His stuff was there, and he too was the victim of a number of dinks and dunks, but thems the breaks when you’re playing baseball. Over the course of a 162-game season, you’re going to have a number of games that you don’t feel like you truly “lost” – and this might be one of them. I didn’t feel like the Astros beat the Rays, but they did score more runs than us last night.
On the positive side, Matty struck out 8 Astros hitters last night, which is more than we’ve come accustomed to see him set down. He needs to keep that strikeout working if he’s going to be the “Ace Lite” that everyone seems to think he can be.
Lazy is as Lazy Does: Seeing that B.J. Upton got his 8th outfield assist last night is a bit misleading, since the assist came as a direct result of his inherent laziness in centerfield. He just kind of assumed that Miguel Tejada was going to stop at first on a base hit to center, so he took his good sweet time in trying to get the ball back into the infield. Tejada nearly turned a single into a double thanks to an Upton mental gaffe, but B.J.’s rocket-arm bailed him out on that one.
Why doesn’t he ever seem like he’s trying?
Where you at, dogs? After three nights of massive attendance, things came back down to earth as a mere 14,000 came out for this one. I expect things will pick up on Saturday and Sunday, though.
The Second-Guesser: Actually, maybe it doesn’t count as a second-guess, since my first comment in the Game Thread talked about this very thing. Gabe Gross has OWNED Roy Oswalt in the past. I’m talking over 6-for-11 with power. Yet he sat on the bench while Papa Joe went with the Hinske/Aybar combination. Hinske did deliver 2 hits, but Aybar put up a big fat 0-for-4. Would Gross have done any better? You never know. But it’s difficult to understand why Maddon would ignore such strong splits on a game that could help set the tone for the rest of the series.
June 21st, 2008 at 5:12 am
Welcome back glad to have you. It was not you it was inevitable for it to happen. Glad it was last night because I am flying my brother in for the next two games from Houston and he is a dedicated Astros fan. Don’t need him to rag on me. Ok guys get yourself out to the game and help us get a win. We look forward to hearing about Angelica and your next blog on tonight’s win. Oh! On Gross, Maddon said he was trying the same winning hand as the night before but I agree with you but what do I know.
June 21st, 2008 at 10:14 am
I always object to these kinds of polls because I think the notion that one decision of that sort means it is Maddon’s loss is silly. First, a sample of 11 ABs is ridiculously small to make any judgments from. Second, we can’t know, even if he publicly says it is to play the hot hand, why he did it, and so cannot evaluate his reasoning. There are myriad reasons Gross did not play.
I do think it legitimate to ask the question, but I stress that then it is a question. I did so at the time-not about Gross starting although that did surprise me a bit, but why he did not replace Hinske in RF in the 9th and then why he did not pinch hit Gross for Bartlett in the bottom of the ninth. Those are reasonable questions but regardless of one’s view of the matter they do not justify criticism unless you know a lot more.
Another example. I was surprised he brought in Glover with the 4-1 score. Seemed to me that Hammel hasn’t pitched in a while and had at least as good a chance to keep it close as Glover did. As it turned out, Glover was excellent, even better than the stats show. I speculated he was saving Hammel in case the Rays tied it and he needed someone for multiple innings, but am only guessing.
Anyway, suppose Glover had given up 2 runs and the Rays went on to score 2 runs because Gross hit a pinch homer off Valverde? Would we then poll people whether it was a Maddon loss because he used Glover? Of course, now we know that Glover did the job, but we could not know that when he relieved in the 7th just as we cannot know what would have happened with Gross in the game from the start and the circumstances are not so obvious that the odds are that clearly on one side or the other.