[Game 6: RAYS 11, Orioles 3] Road woes? What road woes?
By Scott Caruso | April 12th, 2009 | Posted in Game Recap
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |  |
R | H | E | |
|
Tampa Bay
|
0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 11 | 17 | 0 | |
|
Baltimore
|
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 0 |
This is where I would normally put my witty little comment about how I was an idiot for even mentioning that James Shields struggles on the road or about how Grant Balfour is the worst pitcher with the middle name Robert ever to spend more than 6 years in the big leagues after being born in Sydney, Australia, in 1977. But I’m not going to.
Instead, here’s then things you should take away from this game, in no particular order.
1. Evan Longoria… is the beastliest beast stud in the history of beast studs. Sophomore slump my rear end. More like bona fide MVP candidate. (Okay, okay… it’s just one week, but still…)
2. Grant Balfour… looked like he wanted to be anywhere but on the mound today. I guess 11-run games just don’t do it for him. As long as he shows up tomorrow night for the Bombers, I’m good.
3. Ben Zobrist… was clearly feeling the blood of Christ on this Easter Sunday. After his bomb, are you going to doubt the power of he or his Christian music-singing wife?
4. The new FSN scoreboard font… is terrible. I wanted to try and give it a week to see how it felt. It still feels like wearing a pair of 3-size-too-small leather pants that have just been put through the rinse cycle. The 1’s look like 7’s. The 8’s look like 5’s. Somebody needs to fix that, pronto.
5. Apparently, Joe Maddon has been looking and spray charts… because he’s been employing a whole bunch of crazy shifts so far this early-season. It burned the Rays in the 9th inning today, but I like seeing his proactive nature.
6. Matt Joyce… is on the next flight back to Durham, as B.J. Upton has been confirmed for tomorrow night’s lineup against the Yankees.
7. One… is the number of home runs Jason Bartlett hit last year. One is also the number of home runs he has this year.
8. Gabe Gross… may be just 1-for-11 so far this season, but his OBP is at .375. He’s already drawn 5 walks in 16 plate appearances. In other words: that’s really damn good.
9. Three… is the number of hits that Akinori Iwamura, Evan Longoria, and Jason Bartlett each had today. It’s also the number of players that had 2 hits on the game: Carl Crawford, Pat Burrell, and Ben Zobrist.
10. Oh, yeah… that James Shields guy is pretty good, eh?
| Tampa Bay | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA |
| Shields (W, 1-1) | 7.0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 3.65 |
April 12th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
1 inning away from a shoutout for Sir James. 1 blasted inning.
April 13th, 2009 at 7:11 am
It would have been nice to see Shields get a chance to get the shutout. Maddon obviously is worried about his innings thrown for the season, as he is with the entire pitching staff after last year’s increased workload. While it’s nice to be 3-3 for the first road trip of the year, we should have taken 2 out of 3 from Baltimore. And, is anyone else concerned about the base running mistakes thus far in the season? It’s been a joke to watch Gross and Kapler on the base paths. We haven’t even seen B.J. make one yet, but I’m sure he’ll find a way to make sure his name is thrown in that hat. I don’t want to get too negative though. We have the Yanks coming into town for our Championship Home Opener! How sweet it will be to drop the banners down in front of those Damn Yankees! Kaz will go 7 innings tonight, Upton will homer in his debut, Longo will be named MVP for the season because no one else is in his atmosphere, and Pat the Bat will finally hit his first HR as a Ray! And the Rays will win 9-2! What a night it will be!