Postgame Shot Of Joe: Pitch Count, Bullpen Kills Rays
Uncategorized September 5th. 2010, 4:42pm
It’s official. Dan Wheeler and Chad Qualls suck.
It’s because of those two stiffs the Rays lost today and failed to pick up a game on the Yankmees, who lost to Toronto.
Ever the slave to pitch counts, it backfired on Merlot Joe today.
Look, it wasn’t as if Wade Davis pitched horribly in the fifth. He got a double play and a strikeout to retire the O’s, only to see Wheeler and his ADD-fidgeting of his glove to throw a match onto a bucket of gas. Hell, Joe can walk batters just as easily as Wheeler.
Then the immortal Qualls comes in and a hard-gained lead by the Rays was gone.
Why not let Davis come out in the sixth to see if he can fight through the inning? He could just as easily walked two batters as Wheeler. But, nnnoooo Davis couldn’t pitch any longer. He had 103 pitches (GASP)!
Boy, a pitcher constantly playing with his glove ree-LEE distracts the batters, doesn’t it? Oh, Dan, you’re so deceptive!
Shame on Wheeler and Qualls for throwing away a win. Poor mullet-growing Dirtbag and poor Rocco, seeing their efforts pissed away.
“Paging Grant Balfour… “
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Only team worse than the Rays in the AL east now is Boston!
Just got done watching the White Sox beat the other Sox..
Rays pitching going down the tubes, and our buddy merlo Joe doesn’t know which way to go…
and before we hang the pitching staff too much for loses…
I thought the nineth with ZO, CC and Longo never coming close to hitting the ball….kinda puts them in the same boat..
So, this week on to Boston….the battle of two losers….
Probably be a split….(I know only three) I’m betting on the better team?…..If I can figure which will choke less….
Every dogs has their day
The offense has been shit all year; we all know that. But they at least scored some runs, the focus of our rage should be Joe Maddon. Dan Wheeler sucks, always has and he always will. His numbers have made him look better than he really is. No one ever feels safe with him and when he throws strikes I’m scared for the outcome, but his last 2 outings he can’t even do that. I do not get this organization. Jake and almost any other reliever in the minors is a better option than Dan Wheeler. The dude is toast, Troy Percival makes his Rays comeback disguised as Dan Wheeler. Remember how they kept putting Percival out there? They just do the same stubborn shit over and over. Anyone that watches these games knows if you have a lead of less than 5 runs, Wheeler is not a good option. Hell, this pen has only 3 good pitchers, the rest are all chokers. Grant, Soriano, and Beniot are the only ones that I feel okay when they come in. Choate, Wheels, Lance, and now Chad give me a heart attack. There needs to be a better way to use these chokers.
Don’t forget everyone that Carl missed a very catchable fly ball. If he’d caught that then there would be 2 outs in the 6th inning, and the runners would have stayed on 2nd and 1st. At worst it would have been 3rd and 1st, with 2 outs.
Point is that the Rays may have gotten out of that inning with less damage if he hadn’t missed the catch.
On another note, it was absolutely fantastic to see Rocco hit that two-run homerun! Welcome back Rocco!
According to Jordi, you’re mean, evil, boorish, idiotic, (and probably worse, according to his last post about Carl Crawford) for saying all these bad things about the Rays. Tsk, tsk. Everything is A-OK in Happy Fun Rays Land. There’s nothing wrong in Maddon’s Stepford World.
How on earth did you get that message from Jordi’s post? He’s analyzing why people become emotionally invested and then disappointed in their team, and how that is manifested by boo-ing. He’s not saying no one is allowed to be disappointed or critical.
Who are you talking to?
Everybody can pick out a player yesterday that… “should of done this or could have done this”.. include Maddon…
The point is “good” players…”good” teams do what they have to win when times get “tough”…I know corny….but
The Rays are in a position to lose 6 out of 7 ect. with Boston and Tor. up….Wild card berth in the playoffs is NOT a cinch…
Catching the Yankees the way the Rays are playing?….better chance to win the lottery!
We’re at around a 98% chances of making the playoffs at this point, according to projections from ESPN’s predictor. I’d say it’s a cinch.
Hope you were watching last night (Sun) there Mr. 98%….
ESPN’s predictions are about 50% wrong…about the same as throwing darts! Just look at their football predictions!
Correction: Mon night….back to work today… thought it was Mon.
This is one game where the blame can be distributed widely. The hitters, the fielding, the pitching and the choice of pitchers. I don’t think it proves that either Qualls or Wheeler “suck.” Qualls has had a run of excellent outings before yesterday. Wheeler has been mostly effective this season, until the last few weeks. On the other hand, we’ve all been bashing Cormier (for good reason) and then yesterday he was OK. Would anyone here have been able to predict that?
I’m really, I mean crushingly, disappointed about yesterday’s loss. But to say, with certainty, that they lost because these two guys suck, implying that any moron would have known not to use them, well that’s very simplistic.
please keep in mind the original author
not exactly going to make anyone forget Wendell Smith
Taking a pitcher out before the start of another inning at 103 pitches? Hm yeah, sounds like a terrible idea. Even though he’s been to the DL. And he’s a young and valuable part of the club. Even though he’s pitched well enough to keep Sonnanstine and Hellickson out of the rotation.
You’re also suffering from a widespread psychological phenomenon known as hindsight bias, my friend. It’s especially common in blogs where a person puts in their look at the outcome and predicts how if the situation would of been different, something else happens.
It’s fucking baseball. Pitchers have bad days. I’m pretty happy with how our bullpen has performed up to this point.
I think the game was lost when Davis had the runner picked of at first, Pena would have been moving towards the pitcher, fielding the ball at knee level and would have the correct angle to throw out the runner at second when he caught it. I think just throwing a first baseman’s mitt at a player and saying, “Take first today”, just doesn’t cut it. Pena’s foot work and fielding fundamentals are consistent and near perfect. If you want another player to play first, teach them to play the position correctly. Don’t we have any trained first basemen in the group of recently added players?