| Published: N/A |
| Date: July 2007 |
| Section: Sports |
| Comments: |
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By: Ian Essling
The Rays stumbled and fumbled their way into the All Star break, going 1-9 in their last ten games before they mercifully got a reprieve. The team's awful .391 winning percentage is the worst in baseball, and when you have a winning percentage worse than Texas and Kansas City, you know something is seriously wrong. Tampa Bay lost 101 games last year and 95 in 2005; they will easily match those numbers and probably beat them this year. Their second to last game before the break was sort of a microcosm of their entire season; relievers Jay Witasick (1-0, 4.81) and Casey Fossum (5-7, 7.52) combined to walk a team-record five straight batters (walking in two runs) during the eighth inning, giving away a 6-4 lead. The kicker? They were facing the lowly Royals.
James Shields has really been the only burst of sunshine in the black abyss of the Rays' pitching nightmare, but after a strong start, he's been slapped around a lot lately, pulling his record up to 7-4 and his ERA to an acceptable (but not great) 3.82. His K/BB ratio is phenomenal, though, sitting at 6.1. The sad part for Tampa Bay is that the other starters are more than bad enough to erase anything good Shields does. Edwin Jackson is 1-9 with a pathetic 7.23 ERA through only 74 2/3 innings (averaging just 5 innings per start), and none of the other starters have positive records (although Scott Kazmir comes close at 5-6).
On the batting side, Carlos Pena has an OPS of 1.004, OBP of .395 and 20 long balls, BJ Upton is batting .320 and speedy Carl Crawford has eight triples to go with 23 steals, but nothing the guys at the plate do is going to slow down the damage the guys on the mound are doing; the Devil Rays composite ERA is a hideous 5.82, almost a full point worse than the next to last team, the Rangers at 5.08. |
