| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |  |
R | H | E | |
|
Tampa Bay
|
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 0 | |
|
Oakland
|
0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | X | 5 | 6 | 0 |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
R | H | E | |
|
Tampa Bay
|
0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 | |
|
Oakland
|
0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | X | 7 | 10 | 0 |
You really expect me to write about this absolutely horrid weekend? Yeah, not bloody likely.
Instead, this guy has something to say:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
R | H | E | |
|
Tampa Bay
|
1 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 13 | 1 | |
|
Oakland
|
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 0 |
El Gato Grande: Carlos Pena was undoubtedly the hitting star, stroking a pair of home runs and knocking in 4 of the Rays’ 8 runs in the romp. His first homer - a 3-run bomb to center - was absolutely tattooed and got out of the park in a hurry. You talk about being locked in, and Carlos certainly looks to be that after about 10% of the season has been completed.
All he’s done so far this season is lead MLB in home runs and RBI (8 and 21, respectively) while doing everything he can to keep the Rays’ offense afloat. Can he keep it up all season? I sure hope so.
A tale of two Kid K’s: For the first two innings, Scott Kazmir looked like Kid K, Circa Second Half of 2008. For the rest of the game, he looked like a total different pitcher. He really labored through those first two frames, but settled in nicely and gave the Rays a solid 6 innings of work. If it had been a close one, they probably could have stretched him to 7, but was there really a reason to?
Joe Nelson… was bound to have a rocky outing at some point. Thankfully it came when the Rays were up on the Green Elephants by 8 rather than in a 1-run nailbiter with the Yankees.
Look out Ted Williams… here comes Jason Bartlett and his .390 batting average! A 4-for-5 performance last night is just another in a line of fantastic performances by the J-man. Sure it was a bunch of infield hits. And sure there’s no way he finishes the season near .400. But, still, he’s getting on base (44 percent of the time!) and that’s all the Rays can ask for.
Walk this way: You know how you win games? You score runs. You know how you score runs? You get guys on base. You know how you get guys on base? You take balls and swing at strikes. The Rays took enough balls to walk 8 times last night, a great sign that the offense is beginning to see the ball a bit better. (Of course, it helps when the opposing pitchers couldn’t find home plate even with Google Maps.)
Did you know… that Gabe Gross’ on-base percentage is nearly .400 despite a batting average below the Mendoza line? Remember that the next time you say that the Rays should immediately cut him.
Oh yeah, and he’s got a quarterback’s arm in the right-field.
Carl Crawford… now has 6 stolen bases on the season. At this pace, he’ll nab about 60 this season. I’ll take that.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
R | H | E | |
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Chi White Sox
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0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 12 | 17 | 0 | |
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Tampa Bay
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0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 8 | 1 |
Ugh.
Matt Garza… clearly didn’t have his good stuff today. (Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that. You come here for the expert analysis, right?) I’m pretty sure that if you put a pair of way-out-of-prescription bifocals on a 74-year-old woman who had never thrown a baseball in her life, she might have had close to the same command that Mean Matty had today. Oh, did I mention that the woman had polio as a child and is unable to raise either arm above her belly-button?
Adding Injury to Insult: The Bossman (Junior) left the game with a tweak in his quad. Personally, I think he just didn’t want to hang around for this bloodbath. After the sick-nasty catches he’s been making this week, he’s allowed to take a seat.
(In all seriousness, the injury isn’t thought to be too hardcore, and he will likely be back for the Seattle series.)
Let’s see, something good, something good… Oh, yeah! Ben Zobrist continues to mash. Am I the only one who thinks that maybe HE should be the regular right fielder? At least until he stops hitting, anyways.
What does 6 hits in 1 1/3 innings look like? Ask Lance Cormier. To me, it looks like a ticket to Durham in the near future.
Troy Percival… has now allowed 8 baserunners in 3 2/3 innings. Yes, you should be concerned. Very, very concerned.
Sanity check… Before anyone starts jumping off of the Long Bridge Check Gas, the Rays are still keeping pace with the Red Sox and Yankees, and the Blue Jays aren’t going to win 10 out of every 14 games all season long. It’s as simple as that.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
R | H | E | |
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Tampa Bay
|
0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 11 | 17 | 0 | |
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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 |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
R | H | E | |
|
Tampa Bay
|
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 | |
|
Baltimore
|
5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | X | 6 | 9 | 0 |
DVR is a beautiful thing… isn’t it? Due to various pre-Easter family commitments, I wasn’t able to watch the game live. But DVR… oh boy, DVR you are my friend. Because when Jeff Niemann allows 5 runs in the first inning before recording an out, you know it’s time to start fast-forwarding. And that’s just what I did.
You might say: “But Scott, you’re supposed to be covering the Rays! How in the world can you accurately do your job if you’re not watching the whole game?” And to those people I say: “Stuff it.”
I’m sure glad I did fast-forward through it, because not only was it a disappointing affair (O Pat Burrell, where art thou?) but it was an incredibly boring one, too.
B.J. Upton can’t get back soon enough. At least he keeps things interesting since you never quite know what dude is going to do on the basepaths next.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
R | H | E | |
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Tampa Bay
|
1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 9 | 0 | |
|
Baltimore
|
2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | X | 5 | 11 | 0 |
This is going to be a short one tonight… I’m ready for bed.
Andy Sonnanstine… certainly wasn’t at his best tonight. And by that, I mean it was among the worst he’s ever looked. I mean, if you take out his control problems, his crappy fastball, and the fact that he never looked comfortable he had a pretty hood night. But if you’re rational or not entirely blind, you saw that this was not the same pitcher who ate a ton of innings for the club last year.
Let’s hope it’s just a little bit of rust or early-season kinks being worked out.
MVP! MVP! Okay, so maybe we’re 4 games into the season, but Evan Longoria looks like the league’s best player. He’s so locked in right now, it’s scary.
Gabe Kapler’s got a new nickname: From now on, we’ll start calling him Gabe “B.J. Upton” Kapler. You know why.
Sharpened Lance: Lance Cormier certainly fit the bill tonight, tossing 2 2/3 of scoreless ball to at least give the Rays a chance to get back into the game. They didn’t quite do it, but he was certainly a shot in the arm out of the pen. I never projected him to make the roster, but I’m sure glad that I was wrong.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
R | H | E | |
|
Tampa Bay
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0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 10 | 2 | |
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Boston
|
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 7 | 0 |
Winning The Series: If a baseball team wins every single series it plays during the season, it will finish with something like a .700 winning percentage. Though the Rays are going to lose a series here or there, the ultimate goal should be to take 2-out-of-3 every time out there. After dropping the season opener (and looking quite sluggish in the process), the Rays took care of business and left Beantown with a 2-1 record and in great shape heading into a weekend tilt in Baltimore.
Masterful Matt Garza: Dead arm? What dead arm? Garza’s arm was about as dead as a group of 12-year-olds at a David Archuleta concert, as he weaved his way through the Red Sox lineup with 7 innings of 1-run ball. He just picked up where he left off last season; is there any doubt that the Rays could quite possibly have the best starting rotation in the division once David Price shows up?
It’s That Man Again: Evan Longoria is already mashing. The rest of the American League should be scared. Very, very scared. All he’s done so far is go 6-for-14 with 2 doubles, 2 homers, 5 RBI, and a 1.000 slugging percentage. I wouldn’t want to be a mediocre-to-bad pitcher right now, or else he’s going to murder me.
Re-Joyce: It’s clear that the Rays’ management - in general - loves Matt Joyce. On the other hand, the team is paying $1 million each for Gabe Gross and Gabe Kapler. I think it highly unlikely that the Rays move one of those two before B.J. Upton comes back next week, meaning that Joyce is likely ticketed to go to Durham no matter what. That’s too bad; he’s done a lot of real nice things so far.
Troy Percival… still gives me ulcers. And there was a whole lot of old going on when he and Jason Varitek squared off in the first inning.
All Shawn Riggans does… is it home runs in close games. Too bad he can’t do much of anything else.
Thievery! Akinori Iwamura has already stolen two bases this year. Could this be a more free-running Aki we’re going to see in 2009?
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |  |
R | H | E | |
|
Tampa Bay
|
0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 13 | 0 | |
|
Boston
|
0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 8 | 1 |
As sloppy and ugly as Game 1 looked, Game 2 looked crisp, clean, and very Rays-like, as the team pounded out 13 hits in a workman-like romp over the Red Sox in the season’s second game. Jon Lester’s dreams of an AL Cy Young Award were, for the first game anyway, put on hold.
El Gato Fuerte: After whiffing yet again in his first at bat (that was 5 straight to start the season, for those counting), Carlos Pena’s third at-bat of the game was a big one, as he clobbered a Lester fastball deep into the centerfield seats. It was a very Pena-like home run and something that - of course - we all hope to see much more of in the coming weeks and months.
I’m going to see if I can find out of any other position players that began a season with 5 straight strikeouts; it may take me some time pouring through stats though. I’ll get back to you.
Of Pitch Counts and Kid K: We’ve come to expect Scott Kazmir to have a terribly high pitch-count, and he didn’t disappoint yesterday, needing 111 of them to get through 6 innings of work. The point, though, is that he got through 6 innings, allowing just 1 run and 5 hits. The 3 walks weren’t pretty, but they all came early before he settled down.
Evan Sometimes Almighty: A monster bomb and a rope of a double were sandwiched outside a pair of double-play groundouts. At least he didn’t strikeout.
J.P. Howell… made a mess, but the Mad Australian Grant Balfour cleaned it up, snuffing out a Red Sox rally with a big-time strikeout with the bases loaded. If you had Balfour in the predicitions pool about who was going to have the season’s first save, congratulations!
9th Place? Apparently Akinori Iwamura doesn’t believe in hitting 9th in the order, becuase he smoked a couple of balls in going 3-for-4. Most importantly, he came around and scored once for each of the three hits he got.
