The Rays won in ugly fashion today, by a score of 1-0 in Boston. Tampa Bay stranded 11 runners on the bags, including two times with the bases loaded. Joe Maddon finally got his 500th win as the head coach of the Rays after four consecutive attempts. More to come, including a synopsis of todays game, shortly.
Until then, enjoy the graph of today’s game (below), courtesy of Fangraphs. It’s interesting how relatively “flat” the game was until the seventh, when things went in the Rays favor.
…..Update Below, after the jump…..
Ultimately, for the Rays, the game was about two people: James Shields and Fernando Rodney. They absolutely owned the Sox.
Shields pitching line (above) speaks volumes. His last two starts are almost enough to push his opening day jitter filled start by the wayside. In the end, Shields went 8-1/3 innings (just two batters shy of a complete game shutout) and gave up no runs on only four hits and two walks, to a Red Sox team that scored over 30 runs, cumulatively, in the three games prior. Shields also had five strikeouts, and over the course of his 115 pitch outing he threw 76 strikes. That’s pretty damn good if you ask me.
Shields was able to induce 23 pop-ups or ground-outs. I love seeing that six of those came on either outside of the zone or border line pitches. That, to me, says that he had the Sox guessing, inevitably wrongly, and kept them off balance. There’s nothing wrong with a deceptive out of the zone pitch in my eyes, especially if it’s effective. I guess that 1-9/6.75 ERA career record vs. the Sox wasn’t really an indication of much today, now was it?
Speaking of effective out of the zone pitches, ladies and gents…Fernando Rodney. Rodney came on in his fourth save situation of the year and threw 15 pitches, six for strikes, to shut down the last three sox batters. Maddon made a fairly controversial move, after a Rodney induced ground out of Adrian Gonzalez to move Dustin Pedroia to second. Maddon had Rodney intentionally walk David Ortiz to get to Cody Ross. Ortiz had a monster series against Tampa Bay, and is 3/11 lifetime against Rodney with two homer runs. Though Ross had a monster series as well, he’s never faced Rodney. That match-up was in Rodney’s favor. Rodney got two lucky calls by the home plate up, on two pitches that were just off of the plate. With the Gonzalez ground out, and those two pitches, along with the borderline strike and the two foul balls out over the plate, Rodney was able to shut down the Sox and get his fourth save of the year.
Call me crazy, but with this being the last year on Farnsworth’s contract, plus with how well Rodney is pitching, not to mention that the Rays hold an option on Rodney’s contract, we may be seeing Fernando as the closer in 2013. And if he keeps this up, that prospect would not bum me out in the least. Incidentally, DRaysBay wrote a nice piece on why Rodney has been so successful this early into the season. The theory: the Rays have him pitching on the first base side of the rubber instead of the third base side, where he spent many years pitching from. You can check that out here.