I’d like to think there was a risk/reward like situation afoot last night. I went through the effort of connecting my laptop to my television (I mean, who wants to watch baseball on a 14″ screen?), then it took me a few minutes to find a website from which to stream the game (thanks, strikeout.co), and finally I spent four hours live blogging the game while resisting the overwhelming urge to throw my tablet across the room out of frustration. And what was I rewarded with? A disheartening 3-2 loss in the 10th inning. Ouch.
As much as I’d like to blame Balfour for blowing the game — after all, he is the one who got into the 10th inning, bases loaded jam in the first place — the offense deserves a poke of criticism. Jeff Samardzija may have been able to get out of some tough jams, yet he wasn’t nearly as sharp as the A’s announcers made him out to be. Because of it, the Rays had opportunities aplenty to score more than two runs. In the end, the blame should not be placed solely on Balfour — though he played his part. Rather blame the Rays for going 1-10 wRISP, blame Brandon Guyer for not being able to execute a better ninth inning sac bunt, blame all of the Rays’ pitchers (Brad Boxberger excluded) for walking too many batters, and blame the defense for not being able to track down a routine popper in foul territory late in the game.
I won’t regale you with a full game recap — you can read my live blogged account of the contest over at our Tumblr page. Below are a few bulleted game peripherals.
Game Peripherals
- Alex Cobb put together a less than impressive 5-2/3 inning start. Credit where it’s due, he worked into and out of trouble, loading the bases twice but escaping the jam both times, all the while yielding only two runs. His usual impeccable command was noticeably off, and Cobb walked four batters (while only striking out four). The question du jour, was Cobb missing David Price’s leadership? Might he have been too amped up from trying to be a leader?
- The Kiermaier Show. In the third inning, Josh Reddick singled with two outs and Jed Lowrie followed with a double down the right-field line. Kiermaier fielded the ball quickly, per usual, and hit the cutoff man. Yet the relay to the plate was a good ten feet offline and there was no play. An inning later, he flashed his arm once again, throwing to third after a fly ball to deep right field. The runner, a head first sliding Eric Sogard, was barely safe. The show continued in the fifth, when he dropped a liner into the right-center gap that got underneath Brandon Moss’s glove, but didn’t make it the wall. Kiermaier turned on the jets and stretched the double into a single. He came home on a Desmond Jennings base hit to take the lead.
- Isn’t nine usually a lucky number? It wasn’t for the Rays. James Loney led off the ninth inning with an opposite field line drive off Sean Doolittle, and was immediately pinch-run for by Sean Rodriguez. Logan Forsythe was next. The Rays’ second baseman laid down a beautiful sac-bunt to move Rodriguez into scoring position at second. Then the Rays caught a lucky break when a routine ground ball off the bat of Yunel Escobar ate up Jed Lowrie for an error, putting runners at the corners with just one out. Joe Maddon sent in Brandon Guyer to hit for Molina, presumably asking him to lay down a sacrifice squeeze bunt. Sadly, his bunt would not good enough this time around. The ball went straight back to the charging Doolittle who fired it back to home — Rodriguez was out at the plate. Doolittle got Kiermaier swinging at a 95 MPH fastball to end the inning.
- A game of inches… Balfour’s last pitch was good, though he was a bit unlucky at the placement of Norris’s game winning weak grounder up the middle. Then again, that’s what happens when you walk back-to-back batters to load the bases.
- Marc Topkin wrote about the game changing, ninth inning mis-call and misplay which found Maddon ejected from the game.
It was during Donaldson’s at-bat, on a check-swing on a potential strike three that instead became ball three that Maddon was ejected by first-base umpire Quinn Wolcott.
Maddon was tossed before he got out of the dugout as Wolcott held a hand toward him as a sign to not proceed, but at that point Maddon wanted to have his say, telling reporters later it was a call that was both “absolutely blown” and “egregiously bad” and could have changed the outcome of the entire game.“That’s not borderline, that was egregious,” Maddon said. “And that’s what I had a problem with. I’d been patient all night with a lot of stuff. Some of the umpires in this particular crew you have to be patient with. My patience ran out at that particular point. That call was inappropriate. I know he’s a young umpire; hopefully he learned something from it.”
It was only worse that moments later Rodriguez went racing back and Kiermaier came charging in and a foul ball that would have been the second out dropped between them as both seemed to think the other may have had the better shot.
- About that misplay,
#Rays Balfour limited in post game comments, said “it’s tough when you’ve got to get 5 outs sometimes”
— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) August 5, 2014
The New What Next
The Rays start the day 54-58 and 9½ games behind the American League East-leading Orioles, and 5½ behind the Blue Jays for the second American League wild card. Though it won’t be easy, it’s absolutely incumbent on the Rays to take the next two games if they hope to remain relevant. Tonight should be an easier task than tomorrow. Drew Smyly will make his debut with Tampa Bay, opposite of former Ray Jason Hammel (8-9, 3.87). Hammel has had a rough go of things of late. The Athletics have taken a loss in his last four starts, while Hammel has been pounded to the tune of 18 runs on 26 hits including five homers. The two pitch pitcher has been victimized when behind in the count (.298 BA/.385 OBP/.537 SLG with a 1-0 count, increasing to .469 BA/.605 OBP/.935 SLG with a 3-1 count) and with runners in scoring position (.282 BA/.358 OBP/.457 SLG, – 13.4 LOB%). The Rays will look to work good, patient at-bats against Hammel. You can read about the pitching matchup in our series preview.
Rays 8/5/14 Starting Lineup
Jennings CF
Zobrist LF
Joyce DH
Longoria 3B
Loney 1B
Escobar SS
Figueroa 2B
Casali C
Kiermaier RF
Smyly LHP
Noteworthiness
- Per Rays notes, tonight is 65th time a former Rays pitcher (Jason Hammel) starts against them; they are 34-30 up to this point.
- Rays pitchers need eighy strikeouts tonight for 1,000 on the season. If so, they will reach that mark in the fewst games in MLB history — 113.
- In Baseball America’s Best Tools survey, Jake McGee was voted the Anerican Leagues second best fastball; James Loney and Evan Longoria were voted the second best defenders. Also in that survey, Joe Maddon was voted the third best manager, while Yunel Escobar can lay claim to the third best infield arm.
- David Price will make his Tigers debut Tuesday night against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. And as he prepares for a new stage in his career, he wanted to give thanks to Rays fans and other people from his Tampa Bay past with a full-page ad in the sports section of Tuesday’s Tampa Bay Times. Price is still a class act in my book:
