The GBT - The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
Red Sox 2, RAYS 1 (boxscore)
THE GOOD: The Rays got on base! Sorta? Well, the leadoff hitters got on base early in the game. In the first 6 innings, Rays batters leading off an inning went 3-4 with a walk and a hit batter. That’s what the Rays were missing earlier in the year when they were hitting a lot of home runs. Of course, home runs are streaky and last night the Rays didn’t hit any and only one of those runners came around to score. And then, later in the game things fell apart a bit. Leadoff hitters in the final 3 innings went 0-3 with 3 strikeouts. So there’s that. But if the Rays can get on base early in innings more often, the home runs will come and the offense will thrive.
THE BAD: Poor Chris Archer. He is pitching just well enough to lose ballgames. He wasn’t bad. He wasn’t that good either. He gave up 5 hits and 2 walks and was pulled after just 5 innings thanks to needing 109 pitches to just get that far. Archer now has a 4.11 ERA. His 3.75 FIP suggests he has been a little better than that, but that is still just 36th in the AL out of 84 qualified pitchers. That’s still mediocre at best. But worse than that is that Archer now has 17 losses. He also has maybe 7 starts left, so 20 losses is a legit possibility. He is also 19-30 in the last 2 years combined and his career record is 39-49. More importantly, the Rays are now 58-62 in games started by Archer in his career. Maybe the hype train left a little too early. Oh, and there was this. Archer just can’t win.
THE TELLING: Oswaldo Arcia has been claimed off waivers by the Marlins.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- Tim Tebow will have a baseball tryout next week and the Rays will “probably” attend. Make no mistake, somebody is going to sign Tebow. If anything, it will be a cookie for somebody’s minor league team to sell more tickets. A lot of players in single-A are just roster fillers already and minor league teams LOVE to create a circus atmosphere. He’s getting signed. [Twitter]
- The Rangers released Josh Hamilton and even though he can’t play anymore, many Rays fans immediately started clamoring for the Rays to sign him as if “coming home” would suddenly fix all his problems. But here’s the thing. The reason he was released now is because that means the Rangers can bring him back for spring training next year on a minor league deal. He’s not coming to the Rays. [LA Times]
(0)Dislikes
(0)
7 Comments
Somehow the bottom of the batting order last night of Beckham, Morrison, Dickerson and Souza seem to be a crystallization of where the organization has gone wrong this year (Souza's misplay in RF that let the 2nd run in kind of the icing on the cake). They all 4 hit it hard, but they hardly ever hit it and their strike zone management is non-existent.
We had better players -- Loney, Guyer - available, but went with these guys because of exit velocity or whatever new metric the nerds now say matters. I am all for innovation, but it must be balanced with common baseball sense. When Rays players are telling Sports Illustrated that nothing matters to Rays management except a batter's exit velocity, that is a deep concern.
We need some gray hair in management. A counter-balancing force. Maddon, for his faults and his creativity, was still an old baseball guy and a force to push back on the madness. Hunsicker was that too.
Gus check out this link to fortify your point. Bloom, Silverman, Neader to name but a few are Ivy League, Goldman Sachs types. Lukevic is the only gray hair I could find. http://tampabay.rays.mlb.com/team/front_office.jsp?c_id=tb
Where did you read they got rid of Loney and Guyer due to exit velocity?
In SI last week, the article about metrics included a quote from a Rays player who said they were only evaluating batters on exit velocity, not OBP or, you know, actual success on getting on base like a high OBP guy like Guyer or a higher contact guy like Loney.
Because cutting Loney didn't save them any money, and Guyer mid-season dump only save them about $500K, I don't think it was money primarily driving those decisions (maybe some in Guyer;'s case). It clearly wasn't about OBP or actual batting statistics. My conclusions, based on those facts, is that they are going on exit velocity as a primary criteria.. Morrison, Beckham and Dickerson do hit it hard -- when they actually make contact.
2.61 vs 5.97 era
.210 vs .278 BA
So there you have it, THE TROP HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CHRIS ARCHER’S HORRIBLE SEASON. Well, the FO(and Cork) will tell you his plant foot is worn out due to the pounding it takes on the hard surface during home games, and it then takes the entire away trip for it get better and then the cycle continues(you can clearly interpret that from sabermetrics). So it truly is the Trops fault!! wow, I'm a believer now. Thanks Cork, poor Carl Crawford.
He’s going to have more losses than ANY PITCHER IN (DEVIL) RAY’S HISTORY. Let that sink in, it burns as it does. Yet this FO and many of you think that we should have gotten CY Young offers for him?!?!? He struggles in our division, they all have solid “books” on him. The teams outside of our division are his better games.
I think the reason his number are worse within the division is because 3 of the top 4 teams in run scored are in the AL East. The other parks within the division also favor hitters over pitchers.
The best Evan Longoria season ever, I think.
He has been a class guy and handled himself as a pro from Day 1 (or at least from the day after he and Price were screwing around with the AK 47 at spring training).
While there have been spots where he hopelessly chased the slider away, this year reminds you of what peak Evan was (and is). Would love to see him try and put together a great mid-late career run here. He is in the midst of the best Rays top of the order ever. Definitely seems to be synergy there with Miller. Just a pleasure to watch. Don't want to take him for granted.