The Hangover: If The Devil Rays Scored 42 Runs On A Football Sunday, Would Anybody Notice?

Devil Rays 6, Red Sox 4.
The Devil Rays played yesterday? Unfortunate that the Rays pulled off their best performance in over a week, when the game was played at the same time as a Bucs home game in which the Bucs looked as good as they have since the 2003 season opener against the F’eagles*.

*We are of course dismissing every game since then against the Falcons and Michael Vick.

DEVIL RAYS WEBTOPIA…

• On Saturday, the Rays hitters broke the AL record for strikeouts in a season. BJ Upton became the first member of the 20-20 club in franchise history. [USA Today]
• Apparently beating Tim Wakefield is a “sign of progress”. We believe being dominated by a knuckleballer is #4,376 on the list of reasons why the Rays are yet to experience success as a team. It comes in just ahead of “too many rainouts at the Trop” and just behind “Joe Maddon’s shoe size”. Believe us, we understand that finding an angle on a game with one week remaining in the last week of yet another 90+ loss season is a trying task at best. But Papa Joe…come back to us. please. [TBO]
• Carl Crawford did not play this weekend and with only one week remaining, he may not return this season. [tampabay.com]

“I’m not so sure right now he’s going to be able to do this,” Maddon said. “We’re hopeful for the first game back (Tuesday), but it just doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere we need it to go for him to participate right now. We’ll look at it again after the day off but I’m not anticipating he wil be able to play.”

• Joe Maddon makes a case for Delmon Young to be rookie of the year. [TBO]

“You put the whole picture together to tie this whole thing into a nice little bundle, and I think it equals Rookie of the Year,” Maddon said. “Everybody just wants to talk about offense – talk about his defense and his stolen bases this year. He’s playing a complete game for us right now.”

• Joe Maddon probably should have saved his “Delmon Young for tookie of the year” speech for the Yankees series as it likely fell on deaf ears with the Boston Media. The voting members of the Boston are likely to already have their vote cast for Dustin Pedroia. [courant.com]
• Marc Topkin interviews Joe Maddon. We love, love, love the last question “ Since the Rays won’t be in it this year, who do you think is going to win the World Series?”. ON the surface it seems a little ridiculous that Topkin would need to preface that question by informing the manager that his team has already been eliminated from playoff contention. But in Topkin’s defense. He is interviewing Papa Joe Maddon, the eternal optimist. [tampabay.com]
• Stacy Long offers his thoughts on the pitchers and hitters that should be named as the top minor leaugers for 2007. Not much to argue with. [Stacy Long’s Riverwalk Talk]
• The team decided to shut down James Shields for the remainder of the 2007 season, but will not do the same with Scott Kazmir, who will make his next scheduled start, stating that the lefty has looked fresher than Shields recently. [Devil Rays]
• We didn’t write it, but we were thinking it. This was one campaign that we are sure seemed much better on the drawing board. [The Serious Tip]
• Al Reyes hopes to have his option ($2 million) picked up for 2008. It should not even be a question. Reyes mentions that he would prefer to close but would be willing to be used as a setup man if that is what is asked of him. [TBO]
• Wes Bankston, who was designated for assignment last week, was claimed off of waivers by the Kansas City Royals. [The Raw Feed]
  
• Raymond and Wool E. Bull show their hip hop moves…If you are into that sort of thing. [Deadspin]
• With the Devil Rays becoming the Rays in 2008, devilrays.com will need to change their domain name. The obvious choice is rays.com but that will not happen as the owners of that domain name, Rays Boathouse in Seattle, is not selling. [Seattle Times]

The Hangover: Quick And Painless

Tim Wakefield 6, Devil Rays 0.
We got nothin’ today…Enjoy the links while Delmon Young flails and misses yet another Wakefield knuckler by 18 inches. And wake us when Kazmir finally stops throwing pitches in the first inning.

DEVIL RAYS WEBTOPIA…

• In addition to being called up to the majors and getting a walk-off hit in his first at bat with the Devil Rays, Joel Guzman was able to meet his childhood idol, Davif Ortiz. [Devil Rays]
• Joe Maddon says not to expect more than a couple of additional players to be called up when teams are allowed to expand the rosters on September 1. Look for Maddon to go to a six-man rotation to ease the pitch counts of Scott Kazmir and James Shields [tampabay.com]

“We don’t need a whole lot of folks up here right now,” Maddon said. “We have a young group that needs to continue to play. We’re playing to win and we’re playing against a lot of contending teams and we set it up to win, so I don’t anticipate a whole bunch of people showing up.”

• We thought for certain that The Ledger would have fixed THIS headline by this morning, but apparently not. Just to clarify, Joel Guzman had 19 at bats with the Dodgers last year. [The Ledger]
• Carlos Pena is the Devil Rays representative on the ballot for the Hank Aaron Award. We have made our thoughts on this award known before and we still think it is a joke. [Devil Rays]
• Another blogger weighs in on how to “fix” the Devil Rays. This time the solution is a new stadium. Simple huh? First of all, if we have said it once, we have said it six times, the Trop is not a bad place to watch a game. It is still being penalized by a reputation that is perpetuated by people that have never seen a game at the Trop. Have these people ever been to Shea Stadium? And we know that Fenway is historic, but it is the most uncomfortable stadium we have ever been to. There is more leg room on a plane and most of the seats do not even face towards the infield. For example, if you sit down the right field line, you are facing the monster. Second, the lease the Devil Rays have with the Trop is well-documented and about as iron-clad as any stadium has with a pro team, so the Rays are not going anywhere anytime soon…even if everybody seems to think they should. [Dahmen Daily]
• The Devil Rays have broken ground on their new Spring Training complex in Charlotte County. [WinkNews.com]

The Hangover: Innings Start To Pile Up For James Shields And Scott Kazmir

Red Sox 3, Devil Rays 0.
Well, you saw that one coming. Not only did the Rays not get to their hotel until 6:30 in the morning, but Red Sox fans are so desperate these days that one panicked member of Pink Sox Nation felt that the Scarlett Ho’s needed help against the team with the worst record in baseball. That’s right, at 8:00 AM the fire alarm at the Rays’ hotel “mysteriously” went off.

We never thought we would do this…but we are openly rooting for the Yankees to overcome the last few games so that the 2007 Red Sox go down in history as the team that blew a 14.5 game lead.

With James Shields throwing 6 more innings last night and Scott Kazmir on the mound tonight, the biggest concern for the last few weeks of the season is the number of innings pitched by each pitcher. After tonight, if Joe Maddon sticks to his five-man rotation for the rest of the season, both pitchers will have eight more starts. Kazmir is averaging 6 innings per start which puts him on pace for 205 for the year. Shields is averaging 6.8 innings per start and is on pace for 225.1 innings.

Young pitchers are notorious for having off-years after seasons in which they throw considerably more innings than they are used to. Kazmir’s professional career high is 186 innings in 2005, and if he throws 205 this year, that would only be a 10.2% increase over his previous career high. However, Kazmir may have felt the effects of throwing all those innings in 2005 by experiencing a tired shoulder in the second half of 2006.

Shields threw 186 innings last year which bested his previous career high by 43 innings. We may have seen the effects during a recent 8 start stretch in which he went 2-6, during which he may have been suffering from a “dead arm”. Still, Shields is on pace to top last years’ innings total by 21.1% which must be of concern for Joe Maddon, Andrew Friedman and Devil Rays fans everywhere.

It will be interesting to see how Maddon handles both pitchers down the stretch. We could see Maddon limit their pitch counts with both pitchers being pulled after 80-90 pitches in an effort to save their arms. The other option which may be more likely, is to see Friedman promote Jeff Niemann and go with a 6-man rotation for the final month of the season. Such a move would mean 1-2 fewer starts and 12-13 fewer innings in 2007.

Spring Training 2008 has already begun and several pitchers are auditioning for jobs. Such is not the case for Kid K and James Shields. Those two can already be penciled in at the top of the rotation so there is nothing left to prove in 2007 and no reason to push them too hard. Let them continue to work and continue to improve, but it is time to reel them back a little bit and ease up on their workload as a preventative measure for 2008.

DEVIL RAYS WEBTOPIA…

• Tim Wakefield had a no-hitter through 6 innings that was broken up by Carl Crawford. [TBO]
• Both David Price and Fernando Cabrera remain unsigned. Why is everybody all worked up about Cabrera, a pitcher with a 5.00+ ERA each of the last two seasons? We have no idea. Could he be good? Sure. But people are acting like this guy is a savior. Calm down folks. His numbers mirror Chad Orvella. [TBO]
• Remember the crazy Canadian that tortured himself by writing about (pronounced “A-BOOT” in Canadian) the history of the Devil Rays? Well he is back today with a look at how things are getting better. [Jack Jock’s Thought]
• According to The Pig Pen, the Devil Rays have the worst uniforms in the American League. Certainly they do not have the history of the Yankees or the Red Sox, but the Rays green and grey are not that bad. In fact, we are hesitant to see the change of colors to be presented this fall. [The Pig Pen]

AL East Roundup: Devil Rays Magic Number Is 159

AL EAST	W	L	GB	L10	STK	E#
Tampa Bay Devil Rays	2	1	0	2-1	W2	—
Boston Red Sox	2	2	0.5	2-2	L1	159
New York Yankees	1	2	1.0	1-2	L2	159
Toronto Blue Jays	1	2	1.0	1-2	L2	159
Baltimore Orioles	1	3	1.5	1-3	W1	158

Orioles 6, Yankees 4. It was another cold night in the Bronx and as usual, cold weather is harder on old people. The 22 year-old Adam Loewen out-pitched the 38 year-old Mike Mussina to give the O’s just their first win of the season, and drop the Yankees a full game behind the Devil Rays. Man, we love the sound of that.

Rangers 2, Red Sox 0. The Rangers picked up their first win in their home opener. Robinson Tejeda pitched 7 innings giving up only 2 hits. Sammy Sosa picked up an RBI single. Oriole’s fans must be pissed off when they see Sosa. He looked anorexic in his one season in Baltimore, and now he looks like Slammin’ Sammy again. He obviously spent a lot of time in his year off lifting weights and taking dietary “supplements”.

• A report shows that the Orioles have a major impact on the Baltimore economy. No word on the impact the team has on the health of their fans.
• It’s a good thing the O’s won last night, because the fans were starting to get restless after their season-opening sweep at the hands of the Twins.
• Corey Patterson will be the O’s representative to wear Jackie Robinson’s #42.
• Jonathon Papplebon is back as the Red Sox closer, but the team is planning on using him less than they did in 2006.
• At 13 seasons, Tim Wakefield is tied with Mo Rivera with the longest continuous service with their current teams. Only John Smoltz (19 years) and Trevor Hoffman (15) have longer tenures.
• Jonny Damon missed another game, but reported significant improvement, and won’t go on the DL.