Today is the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park, and during SportsCenter today, ESPN asked a bunch of current big leaguers their thoughts on the historic ballpark. Among those were BJ Upton and David Price.
Strangely, Luke Scott was not asked for his thoughts.
Here’s the clip…
Here are a couple of leftovers from the weekend, including Luke Scott and Evan Longoria with their own handshake. There are two more clips below…
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
THE GOOD: Luke Scott. Facing boos once again for his recent comments about Fenway Park and Red Sox fans, Scott responded with a long home run in the first, and a double off the wall in the third. He drove in 4 of the Rays 5 runs…Starting Pitchers. The biggest reason the Rays have gone from 4-1 to 4-4 is the starting pitching. So why is this a “good”? Because it has to get better. If the Rays were losing a bunch of game 2-1, then we would be worried, because there would be real concern of what the offense can do. But the offense scored 5 runs yesterday. If they keep doing that, the pitching will be good enough to win a lot more than they lose.
THE BAD: The Bullpen is a Mess. The bullpen, again in disarray thanks to a starting pitcher not working deep and the long-guy being the reliever called up just prior to the game, gave up 8 runs in 3 innings.
THE TELLING: Elliot Johnson was left bleeding from a finger on his non-throwing hand after diving for a ball down the left field line. You can see Johnson bleeding and his finger shaking uncontrollably in this GIF. We’d be surprised if that is not broken…Jose Lobaton went on the DL and Chris Gimenez was called up from Durham. Also, Dane De la Rosa was sent down and replaced by Alex Cobb…BJ Upton went 0-4 in his rehab assignment game.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
THE GOOD: David Price. OK, it wasn’t his best outing ever. He gave up 5 hits and 4 walks in less than 7 innings. But when staked to an early lead, he didn’t blow it *cough* James Shields *cough*…Matt Joyce. After going 0-4 with 4Ks in the opener, Joe Maddon moved Joyce to the cleanup spot, and Joyce delivered, with his first home run of the season, a no-doubt-about-it shot and also added a 2-run single in the 7th that put the game out of reach…Luke Scott. In his first start for the Rays, he delivered 3 hits, including a 2-run single in the first…Shifting. Nobody shifts more than Joe Maddon. And in the 8th inning, after the Yankees put men on 2nd and 3rd with no outs, the Rays ended the inning when Mark Teixeira lined out to Sean Rodriguez in shallow right field, who then doubled-up the runner at second to end the rally.
THE BAD: Josh Lueke. One day after Joe Maddon used everybody else in the bullpen, the Rays needed Lueke to pitch two quiet innings in an 8-2 ballgame. But after a decent first inning, things fell apart in the 9th. The Yankees scored 4 more runs, and eventually had the tying run at the plate in the form of Alex Rodriguez. In all, Maddon needed 4 relievers to get the final 3 outs…No Home Run. Evan Longoria nearly had his second home run of the season, but a fan appeared to reach over and grab the ball. The call was later changed to a double. What’s worse is seeing that the fan that interfered was wearing a Rays cap, and a Yankees jersey.
THE TELLING: Both the Yankees and Red Sox are 0-2, so all is right in the world. Of course, the Blue Jays and Orioles are both 2-0, so maybe this is bizarro season…Luke Scott says his teammates won’t let him shave his Wolverine beard…James Shields will move up in the rotation in the next series to stay on normal rest…BJ Upton will begin a rehab assignment this week and is not expected to join the team on the road trip.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
David Price was on ESPN Radio’s “Mike and Mike in the Morning” where he discussed, among other things, his towel injury and why Joe Maddon is so good…
If you are a network covering the Rays, don’t you just want to have Price mic’d up every game he’s not pitching?
Here is David Price being David Price for the MLB Network. And it is always entertaining…
Matt Crossman of The Sporting News recently sat down for dinner with Evan Longoria and Jaime Edmondson. The interview reveals several interesting tidbits such as how long Longoria and Edmondson have been dating (a lot longer that you might realize), Longoria’s hobbies (he loves to cook), and how Joe Maddon was at the bar but neither saw each other in the restaurant.
But from a baseball standpoint, the most interesting tidbit was Longoria’s revelation that somebody on the Rays roster had already given up on Game 162 last year and started packing his locker in the fifth inning. Longoria doesn’t reveal which player it was, but one can read between the lines and make a pretty good guess…
“…I’m not going to say any names. I’m not going to out anybody. But I guess one of the guys on our team had gone into the clubhouse and started to pack up his locker in the fifth inning, telling our trainers, ‘It was a great year—thank you for everything.’ Our trainer was like, ‘What are you talking about? It’s the fifth inning. We’re going to win this game.’ You have to have hope until the last out.“I was in shock that somebody would have done that.”
So who was the mystery player? Obviously we can eliminate players in the game. We can also eliminate players in the bullpen and position players on the bench. Those guys would still be expecting to play at some point in the game. That leaves the starting pitchers.
Our first thought was David Price, since he was taken out after four innings and this happened in the fifth. But Longoria and Price are so close that it would be surprising to hear Longo out Price even in an anonymous fashion. Of course, maybe Longoria is just giving Price a hard time.
Also, Price is such rah-rah guy, he just doesn’t seem like a guy that would ever give up. But he can also be very hard on himself when he doesn’t pitch well. At this point, we are split on Price’s guilt.
So we went to the tape. And by “tape” we really mean the digital copy since nobody actually uses tape anymore, but we digress.
Unfortunately we don’t get a lot of dugout views during the 5th inning. We do see Jeremy Hellickson hanging on the dugout rail…
And we see James Shields pacing in the dugout…
And that’s it. Complicating matters is the story Sam Fuld wrote for Grantland.com about Game 162, in which he says players on the bench spent a lot of time in the clubhouse watching the Red Sox game when the Yankees were batting.
Still, based on the circumstantial evidence collected during WAY TOO MUCH TIME spent on this question, we would say the three suspects would be David Price, Jeff Niemann, and Wade Davis. And well, Niemann and Davis don’t seem like the types to go small-talking trainers in the fifth inning.
That leaves….
Needless to say, many people are having a laugh at David Price’s expense after he injured his neck by toweling off “too vigorously” (you can see Price talking about the injury HERE. Well, here’s one example from the guys at “Mike and Mike in the Morning” on ESPN Radio…
In defense of King David, this is EXACTLY why Joe Maddon is such a great manager. Bear with us…Maddon has created a culture in that locker room that encourages players to be themselves and not to care what people outside the locker room think. He is a parent that has raised an entire locker room of those cool kids that can always do or say anything without fear, when the rest of us are too scared to be ourselves. THIS is Maddon’s greatest trait as a manager.
David Price, do you have something you would like to explain to the folks at home?
Take it away (via TampaBay.com)…
