May 01
Joe is back with his post-game thoughts….
Tonight’s 3-1 silencing of Seattle was what many Rays fans expected this season before Evan Longoria and Kyle Farnsworth went down. Superior pitching. Flawless defense. Just enough in the bats to frustrate fans but win games.
But Joe and everyone else was pretty darn spoiled through April’s hit show. Tonight, though, was more like the Rays baseball we’ve all learned to love — somebody steps up just enough to win with three sub .200 hitters in the lineup.
Matt Joyce drilled a solo shot and a triple — two of the Rays three hits — and Matt Moore, Burke Badenhop and Joel Peralta set the table for strike-out-the-side performance of Crooked Cap. (Joe’s really starting to get more enjoyment out of a Crooked Cap ninth than a MFIKY shirt pull-out to end a game.)
So now the Rays are 1-0 in the Longo Hammygate era and 16-8 overall. Joe suspects Longo won’t be missed until the schedule gets brutal again next week.
Apr 27
Joe is back with his post-game thoughts….
This one went from a Rays laugher in Texas early to within inches of a horrendous nightmare in the eighth inning. Isn’t baseball fun?
This is why those antacid companies are so profitable.
Kudos to Wade Davis for shaking off a near grand slam, then a near wild pitch with a true defensive gem at home plate, before coming up roses in the wild eighth inning.
And Joe has to praise the grit — and that sick pickoff move – of James Shields. He grinded out the rare 11-hitter, an 8-4 victory, on a day the Rays didn’t need him to be anywhere close to perfect. Now his perfect record runs to 4-0.
Of course, the Rays’ four-run first innng could have been much more and averted all this late drama against the AL leaders. But what fun would that have been?
The streak now sits at six games. These Ws in the bank are going to be oh so meaningful come September.
Apr 24
Joe is back with his postgame thoughts….
Tonight was about as fun and soothing as it gets.
Seriously. After a 5-0 spanking of the Angels, we can all pretend David Price is a perennial Cy Young candidate again and that there’s enough pop in the lineup to win in the postseason. Four early solo dingers (ranked in order of beauty) from Carlos Pena, his 1,000th career hit, Desmond Jennngs, Luke Strangebeard and B.J. Upton, who clanged the left field foul poll on a glorified popup, put this one out of reach.
Evan Longoria treated the crowd of 15K (a strong Tuesday) to a sparkling play on a bunt and everything’s happy all around. The Rays might even be in first place by the stroke of midnight!
It’s still too early to worry about Ben Zobrist and Sean Rodriguez looking terribly uncomfortable at the plate, so don’t do it.
Just roll with everything feeling just about perfect right now.
Apr 21
Joe is back with his post-game thoughts….
Two games into his 2012 season and B.J. Upton already has reassumed his role as the Rays’ most captivating and polarizing player.
He’s making plays in the outfield tonight (making you wonder just a little last night), hitting into a critical double play in the fourth, then breaking the game open with a clutch single in the sixth. All the while senslessly begging to get picked off first base, which luckily didn’t happen.
Welcome back, Bossman. It wouldn’t be a Read the rest of this entry »
Apr 17
Joe is back with his post-game thoughts….
Pitching and defense is the Rays’ formula, but it was owned by Toronto in this 7-3 head-shaker in the Skydome, or whatever they call that thing now.
The Rays swung the bats, racked up 10 hits, had some hard luck, but it was the Blue Jays turning double plays and pitching out of trouble. Jeff Niemann was ok, but when will this guy ever become a steady starter?
Joe thought for sure the baseball gods were on the Rays’ side tonight after the bottom of the order led a fifth-inning rally, highlighted by a clutch RBI for Reid Brignac. But that was nowhere near enough to overcome three errors by Evan Longoria. Joe hates to be crass, but perhaps Longo was worn out by an obese Canadian threesome last night. What else could explain such a historic mess from him in the field?
Jake McGee got out of an inning, but he still looks awful.
You know it’s a rough night when Sean Rodriguez taking a couple of walks is among the silver linings.
Apr 13
Joe is back with his post-game thoughts….
Is there anything more depressing than getting abused by Kelly Shoppach?
Perhaps watching Josh Lueke pitch would qualify.
Ol’ Sloppy was swinging a big stick today with three hits batting ninth for the Red Sux, who slapped the ball all over the field for a 12-2 win. David Price was awful and the bats have gone dead.
The only silver lining out of this for Joe was Wade Davis’ three scoreless innings with the game still in play.
Hopefully, MLB will clear Jeremy Hellickson to pitch tomorrow. If not, you know it’s some sort of anti-Rays conspiracy.
Apr 12
Joe is back with his post-game thoughts….
Well, you knew Jeff Keppinger at cleanup was going to get exposed at some point, and his 0-for-5 protecting Evan Longoria qualified today.
What a dump of a 7-2 loss in the rubber game at Detroit. Joe never thought he’d be yearning for the pop in Reid Brignac’s bat, but that’s about what this came down to with Sean Rodriguez and Matt Joyce looking lost and joining Keppinger in taking a collar. Joyce watching a two-strike fastball right down the pipe with two aboard and one out in the eighth was absolutely painful. Desmon Jennings following that by jogging out a ground ball wasn’t pretty, either.
Jeff Niemann didn’t look comfortable, but there was at least enough there to think he might settle in and finish off hitters in future starts. As long as he doesn’t have to hand games off to Jake McGee, he should be just fine.
The 4-2 start is glorious, but this one showed the dark side of this team. Hopefully, it won’t be seen in Boston.
Apr 11
Joe is back with his post-game thoughts….
Pick a hero for this ninth-inning shocker today. Fist-pumping excitement to say the least. Wow!
Joe’s going with the beastly professional at-bats by Desmon Jennings and Carlos Pena in the ninth inning against Justin Verlander. Jennings going the other way with some quick hands on a 98ish heater, and Pena laying off some close breaking stuff with two strikes to eventually draw a critical passed ball and a walk.
One might have been worried that kind of hitting would have been lacking this season minus Johnny Pena, but the Rays didn’t miss him today. And it wasn’t just Jennings and Pena getting it done enroute to four runs in the ninth.
James Shields fired perhaps his best stuff late in the game and was cruising toward what looked like the kind of complete-game loss nobody wants. But it turned into another gem by Fernando Rodney, this year’s bullpen Messiah project.
What an incredible confidence-builder for the Rays. Though it’s clear they didn’t need one.
Apr 10
Joe is back with his post-game thoughts…
Bringing Jake McGee into a tie game to throw fastballs to two hot-hitting, All-Star fastball hitters qualifies as glorious Joe Maddon tinkering. It didn’t work today.
McGee was lucky Miguel Cabrera didn’t take his eighth-inning, grooved meatball downtown and only reached on a double before Prince Fielder drove him in with the winning run.
That’s OK. The genius of Maddon isn’t 100 percent. And surely this wasn’t the Rays’ day for clutch hitting.
Matt Moore looked much like David Price and James Shields did last week, absent his best stuff.
As losses go, Joe can stomach this one amid the snow flurries in Detroit. Perfection wasn’t going to last.
Apr 07
It’s all feelin’ real good about now. Luke Strangebeard is swinging a sweet stick with those fast hands of his. The other big guns are hot, and it doesn’t really matter if Reid Brignac still can’t hit or Jake Magee looked like a nervous lamb before a slaughter.
(Picked off third, Brignac, really, after a pickoff move to first and a play at second that saw your teammate in safely?)
There’s definitely plenty of nitpicking in order with this 2-0 record behind un-Rayslike pitching. But who wants to be a buzzkill on a Saturday night? The only thing worth bitching about is the theft of Evan Longoria’s opposite field home run. That was conclusive evidence? Please.
Two sold-out crowds and two Yankees beatdowns, tonight 8-6, might even leave a guy dreaming that the Rays could see a real bump in attendance this year and St. Pete could start competing with Tampa to house the good guys for the next 30 years.
Dust off the brooms.
