Tampa Bay starts the day one game ahead of the Cleveland Indians and the Baltimore Orioles in the Wildcard race, following another sloppily played game against the Seattle Mariners, Saturday night. The game had the all the hallmarks of a team that’s struggling to keep it together: Poor fielding, questionable pitching, and a non-existent offense. Going into yesterday’s game, Rays skipper, Joe Maddon, was quoted as saying,
“This has been our worst baseball all year.”
As of now, Tampa Bay is 40-11 against sub .500 teams. Of those 11 losses, 10 have come by two or fewer runs. Just think, the good guys would be sitting pretty with an 82-58 record had they won even five of those games. As Kevin, a friend of the blog, noted, “At this point its time to panic. Not panic to the point of just over playing, but reaching down to your soul and using every bit of talent and skill you have.”
Another day, another disappointing performance on both sides of the plate. Tampa Bay continues its 10-game road trip Friday, making the trek north to Seattle to take on the Mariners in a three-game set, following a 6-2 loss against the Angels in the series finale. The late night loss hurt, but the opportunity to bounce back against Seattle is promising. The Mariners are another sub .500 team, and a series win would give Tampa Bay an opportunity to come home on a wave of momentum. Then again, the Angels also are rocking a sub .500 record as well, so…
Suffice to say, at this point in the season Jeremy Hellickson needed to string together a good start. With all of the external factors effecting the probability of the Rays finding a postseason berth, compounded with the fact that Boston absolutely blew out the Tigers in an earlier game, the pressure was on Hellickson and the Rays to win. After a six start stretch where Hellickson relinquished (on average) 4.1 earned runs, while averaging only 4.1 innings per outing*, it would be safe to say that no one knew what we’d see out of Jeremy upon his return to the mound. But Hellickson came out of the fog Wednesday night, putting together a solid 5.1 inning shutout outing.
Don’t call the EMT’s just yet. Tampa Bay showed signs of life Tuesday night in the 7-1 win, and return to the mound of Matt Moore. The Rays All-Star lefty spent the better part of 36 days on the DL with a sore elbow, prior to his 5-1/3 inning start. And granted this may not have been his sharpest start (with Moore posting a 57% K%) of the season, Moore helped ignite the spark that allowed the Rays offense to explode — ultimately tagging Jason Vargas and Anaheim for seven runs on 15 hits and seven walks. Roberto Hernandez came on in relief in the sixth and put together 3-2/3 innings of perfect baseball, striking out seven along the way.
