[THE HANGOVER] The One Where We Discuss How Trading Scott Kazmir Gives Fans The Power Of Invisibility
Andy Sonnanstine, Wade Davis September 2nd. 2009, 7:06am
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: Heart of Order. Nobody can blame Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena. Those two have been red hot the last few games. Combined they were on base 5 times, driving in 2 and scoring thrice.
THE BAD: Andy Sonnanstine. 8 hits, 4 walks, 2 home runs. Only 4 innings. About the same…BJ Upton. 0-4 with 3 Ks and 5 runners left on…Coming Up Empty. Yes they had scored once already, but the bases were still loaded with no outs in a 3-run game. That should be an automatic 1-2 runs. Upton, Bartlett and Crawford went down 1-2-3 effectively ending the game…Strikeouts Are Fascist. 14 of them for the Rays last night.
THE TELLING: A bonus video after the jump that sums up the Rays season in 1:56.
SUNBURST PLAYER OF THE GAME: Carlos Pena
DEVIL DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- On August 22, 2007, the Rays played the Red Sox at the Trop on Wednesday night. The Rays were 47-78 and 27.5 games out of first place. Attendance that night was 17,839. Last night the attendance was 17,692. The Rays can’t get out of St. Pete fast enough.
- The Rays designated Joe Nelson for assignment so that he will have a shot to land with another team. Also, Wade Davis is expected to be called up to pitch part of Monday’s double-header. [St. Pete Times]
- John Romano echoes what we have been saying for a while. At no point this season has this team shown us they are a playoff team. [St. Pete Times]
- Martin Fennelly says the Rays have been waving the white flag for 5 months. [Tampa Tribune]
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LOLOLOL great clip I guess the sign leading to the field from the locker room says….”None shall pass”?????
I’m all for staying positive, but for Sonnanstine and Maddon to both tell journalists that Sonnanstine basically “pitched well” with 8 hits and 4 walks in 4 innings– well, I’m speechless. I’d be more forgiving of the whole debacle if someone just said, “we sucked. Pitching, fielding, hitting — it all sucked.”
Fennelly and Romano’s column’s both disgust me. They both seem to find it necessary to call out the fans upset about the Kazmir trade. Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough to understand why “not giving your team the best chance to win” is good. Get ready, the Rays have set the table and I expect many more of these types of moves in the future. Nobody wants to call them out on it.
I actually have something written up about this. It will be up shortly.
I thought both Fennelly and Romano’s column’s were directly on point. Ownership has continued to put its money where its mouth is, increasing the payroll by large amounts every year since they got here. They were told “all you have to do is put a winner on the field and the fans will come.” The owners have done their part, last year the players did their part, and all they’ve gotten from area fans are excuses. A little over a month ago the fans couldn’t wait to see Kazmir gone for one of the young guys in AAA, now they want to use it as another excuse to not show up. That’s what’s really disgusting.
I agree with the Professor. St. Pete is an absolute toilet and the Rays really can’t get out of there fast enough.
So managment trades its winnigest pitcher of all time, the guy who (behind Neiman) had pitched the best in August, and it is the fans fault! Sorry, I’m not buying that one. As I said Friday in this space, in was ownership making a business decision that was good for them and bad for the 2009 fans. Don’t blame the 2009 fans for this. Who in their right mind would go spend money to see Andy S. get bombed by the Red Sox? Only a fan who is not paying attention. That is spinning the story at its best. Always good to see our local fishhacks drinking management’s Kool Aid.
On attendance — the begining and the end of weekday attendance is this: you need to have season tickets sold to have good weekday attendance. Every other observation follows that. Season tickets are a multi-year bargain between season ticket holder (I’ve been one for 7 years) and ownership. If people don’t see the goods, they aren’t going to commit, especially in this economy, but generally. The Rays were the worst franchise in the history of sports their first 10 years. The worst. It slowly killed a generation of season ticket holders. That is why it was important to capitalize on 2008 by a strong 2009. Today, 2008 looks like a fluke (a rare Yankee down year). And ownership looks like a bunch of wall street guys who don’t care. They might care, but not enough to spend the money that is necessary to compete except in the year where the Sox or Yankees step on their toe.
I think BJ needs a serious change of scenery….dont you?
Anyone who thinks BJ Upton will become a seriously good major league
baseball player is stupid….
He can take his little attitude and his no hitting ability and hit the road!
Attendance….besides school and work the next day (the Rays will sleep all day-fans get home at midnight on Tue) maybe fans are not as stupid as management thinks…Sonnanstine vs Lester is as close to a walk over as it gets!
Why not stay at home (don’t have to buy $8.00 beers) and go to bed when it gets out of control!
I’m glad you can think of so many reasons not to go to a game… meanwhile places hit just as hard by the economy or worse (Detroit, Pittsburgh, California, etc) and/or in much worse position in the standings (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City) somehow find reasons to go to the games.
Stay classy, St Pete!
Who said anything about the economy….
The POINT was why stay out till midnight on a week night (with school & work the next day) when the out come is almost assured with pitching match up??
I would say the Rays chances of winning last was about 1 in 10 (10%)!
I sold my tickets for 1/2 price, when home, drank $.50 beer and went to bed at ten….feel great at work today & $100 richer!
congrats! at this rate you alone might be able to raise the funds to keep the next guy on the chopping block…bartlett anyone?
Back to the trade of Kaz, I am of the opinion that the trade was not the mistake, rather the multi year contract. Granted they were rolling the dice and betting he was the pitcher that all of us wanted him to be. . they just missed on one. I think they wanted to trade him in July, but couldn’t get anything for him (of perceived value). then he started looking better, and the angels came calling again. I give Andrew credit for the trade, of course we don’t know if it will work out as well as the Delmon trade. . . but we were pretty vocal against that one too, weren’t we.