Friday, June 27, 2008

[THE HANGOVER]
Garza 1-Hits The Marlins


THE GOOD: Matt Garza. Nothing we can write will give justice to just how dominating Garza was yesterday. 108 pitches, 76 for strikes. 1 hit, 1 walk. Faced only 1 over the minimum. 7 1-2-3 innings. Garza was strike-one to 19 of 28 batters (68%). On his bad days, that number is around 40% or worse...Also, we don't won't to overlook Evan Longoria who homered and doubled twice in his first 3 at bats.

THE BAD: Marc Lancaster deciding to blog about Matt Garza's attempt at a no-hitter and then having Matt give up the no-hitter and the shutout, on the very next pitch. C'mon Marc. Let's save the Live-Blogging to the professionals...

THE TELLING: This was the Rays' 6th sweep of the season and 1st on the road...The Rays still have a 4-game lead over Oakland in the wild card. They are 4.5 up on the Twins and 5 games ahead of the Yankees. It is nice to see a 2-team bumper between the Rays and the Yankees.

DEVIL RAYS WEBTOPIA...
  • Don't forget to VOTE for Carl Crawford to start the all-star game. If you haven't voted yet today, go NOW! [MLB All-Star Voting]
  • Jim Hickey says that Matt Garza is capable of pitching as he did yesterday, every time he goes to the mound. [The Heater]
"The scary thing is this guy's capable of doing that time and time again," Rays pitching coach Jim Hickey said. "This isn't like some game he pitched way above and beyond what he's capable of doing. This is something, you hear people throw out (Braves great) John Smoltz and compare him to that, and you watch him do something like that, and it's not all that farfetched."
  • Both Carlos Pena and Jason Bartlett are expected to be in the lineup tonight. It is expected that Ben Zobrist will be sent back to Durham. [Rays Report]
  • Tribe Report believes that the Brewers and the Rays are the front-runners for CC Sabathia and they give the Rays a 40% chance of landing the lefty...Of course, losing Jake McGee to Tommy John surgery is only going to make it that much harder for the Rays to trade one of their pitching prospects. [Tribe Report]
  • Bugs and Cranks' latest power rankings are up and the Rays remain at #2. [Bugs and Cranks]
  • Fielder's Choice Baseball Card Blog has a good write-up about Josh Hamilton that sums up how we have felt about the Rays former prospect...While we root for Hamilton and he is a good story on many levels. There is most certainly a part of us that is still very angry with Hamilton for letting the organization, his potential teammates and the fans down. Say what you will about the Rays not protecting Hamilton (at the time we didn't think it was necessary), but if you are going to assign blame in this situation, Hamilton deserves far more than the Rays front office. [Fielder's Choice Baseball Blog]

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2 Comments:

Blogger kyle said...

It would seem that Zobrist is the most likely candidate to get sent down today, but Topkin had this to say:

"It would seem INF Ben Zobrist — who homered in both games filling in for Bartlett — would be sent back to Triple A to make room for Pena, but team officials said there were other options, and they would announce the move today."

What other options are there outside of DFA'ing Glover or someone else? Zobi has options; get rid of him.

AS far as the Sabathia deal goes, it seems to be the Indians are in greater need of bats than pitchers. Besides Brignac and Ruggiano, we really don't have any near-MLB caliber bats. I was not too high on this when the rumors started surfacing, but after all, we can't protect everybody.

I just wonder if there's anyway to get the deal done without getting rid of Hellickson, Jennings, and of course Price.

10:57 AM  
Blogger The Professor said...

you bring up a good point about protecting everybody. we talked about this a while ago, but that great draft class of 2004 is going to force some roster shuffling this off-season as a lot of them will be rule 5 eligible this off-season. McGee changes this a bit, but still trading one or two of these guys might be an answer

2004 Draft

11:01 AM  

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