[THE HANGOVER] The One Where We Discuss Dirtbag’s Hot Bat, The Ghost Of Baserunning Past And A More Comfortable Giraffe
Andy Sonnanstine, Evan Longoria, Gabe Kapler, Jeff Niemann, Jonny Gomes April 11th. 2009, 8:56am
Time to bring back the GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
click above image for boxscore
THE GOOD: Dirtbag! Evan Longoria homered twice and is absolutely locked in right now. that is 4 home runs on the season already. What is his over/under right now? 40?…Benny Boo Boo’s D. Nice dive-’em-out, throw-’em-out by Ben Zobrist in the second inning to get Andy Sonnanstine out of a lead off double situation…Lance Cormier. This is exactly why the Rays need Cormier in the bullpen. Down 5-1 early, Cormier came in and pitched 2.1 shutout innings to keep the Rays in the game as they whittled away at the lead. They came up short yesterday *cough* Kapler *cough* but Cormier is going to help the Rays win a few this season…The Not-So-Fat Catcher. Dioner Navarro ended his mini-skid with his first home run. Mark our words. When this season is over, Navarro will have a line of .310-18-70, or not.
THE BAD: Ghost of Baserunning Past. For a team that stresses fundamentals as much as the Rays, it is amazing how many gaffes they make on the basepaths. First it was Carl Crawford getting thrown out in the first trying to stretch a double into a triple, which of course happened 3 pitches before Evan Longoria’s first home run. And then it was Gabe Kapler who, we don’t even know what he was doing. He was thrown out lollygagging around third base on Ben Zobrist’s infield single to end the rally in the 4th. Of course, the Rays lost by 1…The Duke. Andy Sonnanstine is what he is, and if we have said it once, we have said it many times, when Sonny is hittable, he is very hittable. He just doesn’t have the natural stuff to get guys out when he isn’t on top of his game…Offensive Offense. A good team cannot be held to one run by Lurch. Mark Hendrickson is capable of a good start, but the Rays are too good for it to happen to them. And 7 strikeouts with no walks in the final 3 innings. Yikes.
THE TELLING: The loss ended a 12-game winning streak over the O’s…We would be interested to see a split of Andy Sonnanstine’s stats in weather under 50°. For a pitcher that relies so much on feel, we have a feeling the numbers are not very good.
SUNBURST PLAYER OF THE GAME: Evan Longoria. This one is a no brainer. If he keeps this up, we are renaming the award after him. “The Dirtbag Award.” Or we will just say the player of the game not named Evan Longoria.
DEVIL DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- Can anybody explain this audio clip? And is it telling that we found this on the same night that Gabe Kapler got caught staring at his own biceps while running the bases? And should we be disturbed that this clip is actually part 2 and there is another one out there? [WEEI]
- The Rays Party has a fun little guide to all the Tampa Bay Rays blogs. The number of blogs is growing. That is a good sign, as the number of blogs is likely proportional to the number of fans. [The Rays Party]
- Jeff Niemann says he is not as nervous this season and Joe Maddon added that the Giraffe looks more comfortable this year (Maddon did not call Niemann a giraffe, although it would be pretty funny if he did). In the same piece, Marc Topkin says BJ Upton is still scheduled to join the Rays on Monday for their home opener. [St. Pete Times]
- MLB Trade Rumors reviews the Rays off-season moves. [MLB Trade Rumors]
- Rays of Light has the update on Jonny Gomes’ whereabouts. [Rays of Light]
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I’ll tell you what the freakin’ bad is; its the fact that the Sox lost last night and the Rays were in a situation to put the pressure on early in the season, but instead lose to a 2nd-tier team! Unbe-freakin-lievable!
Staats seemed to think that for some reason Kapler assumed it was an out at first so he was just jogging in before heading to the dugout… BS! Sounds like a Bossman excuse. This loss was unacceptable. Danys Baez comes in and strikes out 517 consecutive batters. Really? Come on, man!
If the Rays intend to contend they can’t be blowing no-brainers in Baltimore. The only saving grace or possible caveat is that they’re still without Melvin Emmanual. If they lose this series in Baltimore they’re already in a hole. You cannot lose the first game of every road series and expect to win the series, it can not/will not happen consistantly. And if you start losing series, then you start falling out of contention real real fast in the East.
The giraffe had better put something together tonight or I may explode (or implode- that’d be less messy)!
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BTW:
-Apparently they’re not as high on Joyce as some of us suspected they were.
-Oh yeah, and zobrist owed us that nice defensive play last night after missing the opportunity to catch that HR in Boston… his +/- is now back to 0
I’m a little surprised that the Jays are starting out so strong. This is going to be a very tight and possibly the strongest division in the league. I can
‘t see many if any in the division to go below .500. Scary
I wasn’t really too upset about Crawford’s base running. That’s the kind of plays that half to try to make all season to put the pressure on the opponents defense. Give credit to the O’s for that throwout… a lot had to go right to get him.
As for losing to the O’s… the Rays aren’t starting out much different than they did last year. The split a 2 game set with the O’s in Baltimore to start the season last year. It’s too early to get focused on the standings. They just need to keep winning each series and move to the next one… the standings will sort themselves out throughout the course of the season.
It’s Kapler’s baserunning you should be annoyed about… that was just Crawford being BJ
Can’t argue with that. But, I usually give a guy at least 10 games with the team before I get too annoyed with them.
I thought Sonny was unlucky. Balls were just finding holes. And I thought we did an okay job minimizing damage (see Zobrist, Ben). We’ll get the wins a lot this year, but Baltimore started hot last year as well and we are not famous for our road form. Patience.
Screw patience!
Patience is for Cubs fans!