Last week’s Rays Confidence Graph results.
Below you will see two polls that ask about your confidence in the Tampa Bay Rays. Please take a moment to answer each question. We will present these same polls every Monday. The results will be presented in graphical form on Wednesday, and will be displayed permanently in the sidebar. The goal of the Confidence Graph is to get a feeling of how Rays fans feel about the team and the franchise and track how that level of confidence changes through time. Thanks!
Raysiverse events of the past week that could impact confidence levels…
- David Price is out 6 weeks with a strained elbow.
- Evan Longoria will begin season in minors. Blogosphere accuses Rays of being cheap bastards. “Rays being the Devil Rays”
- Most fans believe Evan Longoria should be on the opening day roster.
- Some of Evan Longoria’s future teammates react to the demotion in a not-so-positive way.
- More thorough projections suggest 82 wins for the Rays and not 88 or 89 as previously reported.
- Matt Silverman suggests that plan is to keep Evan Longoria in minors all season. Yeah, right.
- Eric Hinske is the starting right fielder against RHPs. Jonny Gomes will only make about 60 starts.
- Rays losing ways not so unusual.
- Scott Kazmir looked good in a bullpen session.
- One of the Rays top outfield prospects is starting to look like he may be injury-prone.
4 Comments
Choosing to start Hinske over Gomes is yet another piece of evidence that Maddon is just not cut out for this job. What would it take for him to be fired before next season?
Hmmmm… Hinske’s stat line begs to differ.
Why are you making such statements without a shred of reasoning behind them? Have you checked what Gomes hits against righties? Have you looked at Hinske’s career line against righties?
As a matter of fact, I would like to see what Gomes could do with 500-600 ABs, but to state that the decision means he is not cut out for the job is plain dumb unless you have some sort of argument.
Robert, you make exactly the point I wanted to exam. I suspect Hinske is pretty interchangeable with Gomes anyway.
ESPN says the numbers for batting against RHP using data for the last 3 years:
Hinske: .269/.351/.463
Gomes: .226/.315/.444
so Hinske is pretty clearly a step up.
Against LHP:
Hinske: .173/.259/.327
Gomes: .299/.402/.551
Clearly Gomes. So a tip of the Hat to Maddon for improving the offense against RHP.
Now if they only had Bonds.