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[THE HANGOVER] The One Where We Discuss Unanswered Questions About Pedro, Joyce’s Demotion And Upton’s Sucktitude
BJ Upton, Gabe Gross, Jason Bartlett, Matt Joyce, Pat Burrell, Pedro Martinez June 12th. 2009, 7:00am
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: The Offense. Scoring runs is not a problem for this team, and it won’t be. 11 more runs, 4 more home runs. How many times this season have you been watching the game and you look up and you are surprised to see that the Rays have 7 or 8 on the board already?…Carlos Pena. El Gato is heating up and it is only going to get better with Pat Burrell due back tonight…Speaking of Which. Have you seen Pat Burrell’s new goatee? It is trashtastic, but maybe that is the cure to get him out of his season-long funk.
THE BAD: David Price. 6 strikeouts is nice, but 6 walks in 4.1 innings is horrible. As are the 105 pitches…BJ Upton. 0-5 with 3 Ks, and 2 for his last 20 with 8 strikeouts and 1 walk. That’s not good…Matt Joyce. In his first 2 games after being recalled, Joyce was 5-7 with 2 home runs and 5 RBI. Since then he was 0-15. Hence the demotion…Interleague play. We are generally fans of interleague play, but for every chance you get to see the Rays play in Coors Field, we are going to have to deal with the Nats at home.
THE TELLING: The Rays continue to lead all of MLB in scoring (5.6 r/g). They are also second in OPS (.810), behind only the Yankees (.832). However, the Rays 42 errors are the 3rd most in the AL and they are on pace for 110. Last year the Rays committed only 90.
SUNBURST PLAYER OF THE GAME: Gabe Gross. Navarro left 6 men on base. Pena’s home run came when the game was over. Gross was on base 4 times and drove in 2.
DEVIL DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- Marc Lancaster on Pedro Martinez: “Probably not”. Marc Topkin on Pedro: “Unlikely”. And yet, nobody has explained why the Rays have scheduled a second workout. So far, everything else in the original report was true, so there is no reason to believe there isn’t a second workout scheduled. And if you missed our post last night, Nick Cafardo is reporting that the Rays and Pedro have already been discussing dollar amounts. The Rays may not sign Pedro, but there is more to this than just somebody watching a friend workout.
- To add a strange twist to the Pedro Martinez story. Keep in mind that Don Zimmer is a senior adviser for the Rays. Michael Weber of Rays Revolutionary spoke with Zim’s grandson who says the two have patched up their differences and now consider each other friends.
- Pat Burrell has been activated and we suspect he will be in the lineup tonight. To make room, Matt Joyce was demoted back to Durham. [The Heater]
- Jason Bartlett will begin a rehab assignment tonight as the DH for Charlotte. He will play shortstop on Saturday and Sunday and should be back with the Rays on Monday.
- Joey Johnston has some quotes from Matt Joyce on his demotion. [Tampa Tribune]
- MLB Notebook says Pedro Martinez makes sense for the Rays. [MLB Notebook]
- Joe Smith writes about the Rays 4th round pick, a catcher who may have been a first-round pick before he had Tommy John surgery. [St. Pete Times]
- Everybody’s favorite interviewer of the Rays, David Brown, is back with a Q&A of Edwin Jackson. Ok, so it is a former Ray, but great read still. [Big League Stew]
- The Rays Party breaks down Jeff Niemann’s last start. [The Rays Party]
- Rays Prospects has the complete list of the Rays top 30 picks from the draft. [Rays Prospects]
- Trop Talk misses the old Dioner Navarro. [Trop Talk]
an RSox fan friend of mine mentioned last night that the Rays have a 60 run differential, yet they are 31-31. Can one of you more knowledgable than I explain why this so horrible?
6-13 in 1-run games. Last year the Rays had the best record in baseball in 1-run games.
The optimist will tell you that the Rays have just been unlucky and that they will start winning those games more often.
thanks Prof. While I’m at it, is there a site you can recommend where it would be easy to find where the Rays were, W/L wise, at this point last season?
Here ya go
Baseball-Reference
Thanks again, Prof. Been looking for something like that. Going to tomorrow’s game, and will stay for a bit of Ludacris. I have to say though, as a 50 year old white guy, I’m more familiar with his acting than his music
What would the realist tell you?
Along with the horrible record in close games, the Rays have also had several blowout game wins (8 games in which they won by 8 or more runs) and very few blowout losses (only 1 this year). The run differential in those 8 wins is 64 — yet it still only accounts to 8 wins in the standings.
And that was supposed to say 60 run differential
OK, let me get this straight, Kaplers benefit to the team is more valuable because of of his work ethic, and experience, so we send a guy who
’s batting average was better than Kaplers in two weeks than gabe’s was in three months? I too wish for someone smarter than me..to TELL ME WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? I will take the long walk off the short pier if we blow one game to the nats.
That’s what I really hate aboutthis series. It is only a success if the Rays win all 3.
That’s very true. However, good teams (ones that want to make the playoffs), wipe a team like this out.
Well, the Mets just got swept by the Pirates and they only won 2 out of 3 from the Nats. I hope this isn’t like the issue they have with the Indians…they get clobbered by the bad teams and only win agst good teams because they’re amped up…
I’m fine with the Matt Joyce demotion because it saved Joe Dillionaire! Seriously, it’s a fact of baseball, sometimes a young player has to go down to the minors because you don’t have options of veterans. It doesn’t make since for the Rays to pretty much just cut Kaplar (or Dillionaire) in order to keep Joyce in the majors.
I know it hurts to watch E-Jax tear it up with the Tigers while the Rays play yo-yo with Joyce. But, the fact is, the Rays don’t have much room for error when it comes to payroll and roster. Cutting Kaplar loose would be real bad if one of the outfielders got hurt. Then, you’d be stuck with Justin Ruggiano. And, seriously, while Joyce has been better than Kaplar, he hasn’t exactly torn it up and forced the Rays to keep him up. That’s what he’s going to have to do to crack the roster until they’re expanded.
All the Joyce demotion says to me is that the Rays couldn’t drum up any interest in Kapler, and weren’t going to release him outright just to make room for a struggling youngster.
I’d basically guarantee you that if someone had offered the Rays 1 decent low-A prospect for Kapler he’d be gone… gone like a freight train, gone like yesterday, gone like a soldier in the Civil War (bang-bang).
Hey prof-
We actually played the Rox @ Coors in 2007, Sonny’s 2nd game (I believe)
Good catch. I do not remember that at all. Strange.
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I was at the game last night, it was fun to watch in person… I thought one of the Telling for yesterday was the 2 out RBI, we seemed to prolong innings that we normally don’t, and i think I saw in the box score that the Rays were 4-12 with RISP. Good stuff, and we always talk about timely hitting in baseball, yesterday the Rays had some timely Pitching. LAA only had 4 hits, but they weren’t short on base runners with all of the BB, but the Rays found a way to keep them from scoring. Also, how about Randy Choate, he only pitched 2 innings, but he shut the halo’s down in those 2 innings while the Rays tacked on 4 more runs.
All good points.
Furthermore, the Rays have really made the best of 1st and 3rd situations over the last few games. I don’t just mean stealing second I mean hitting singles to score the run and advance the runner from 1st to 3rd and continuing the cycle… very effective way to take advantage of speed instead of always having to rely on power to score runs.
Yes, I have noticed that the Rays have been going 1st to 3rd well, I couldn’t quite understand why Santana wasted so much effort trying to keep Brignac close to the bag, I think it was in the 4th, even when Reid was on third he was messing with him, and it ended up costing the Angels, because the runner on 1st, I think it was CC took 2nd on that botched play. I’m not sure it it was bad double pick off move or what, but it was good for us.