Game 96 – Those power hitting 9 hitters

What is it w/Burnett and 9 hitters? He seems to either be walking them or giving up HR’s. In Anaheim it was Sean Rodriguez who took him deep which brought LAA within a run and setup their comeback vs Ryan in the 9th. This game it is Ben Zobrist who takes him deep for a 2-run HR to give TB a 2-1 lead which ended up the final score. Of course you have to take into consideration it was the 2-out walk to Hinske that was on base for the HR. When you have a 2-run lead w/2 outs and nobody on you can’t be afraid to go after the hitter. There is no excuse for walking a guy in that situation.

Although Burnett only gave up 5 hits in his 7 innings he struggled w/his control. He walked 3 and hit one batter. He also started the game off w/1st pitch balls to the 1st 4 batters and ended up throwing 16 1st pitch balls of the 29 hitters he faced. Pitching behind that much will usually hurt you a lot more, but this time Burnett got away relatively unscathed the only problem was their was no offence to back him.

I think tonight the Jays lack of offence had a lot to do w/Shields. I think Shields got a few more fly balls than he would like (10 outs in the air and 6 on the ground) but they all seemed to find their way to outfielders gloves. All told Shields gave up just 4 hits and 2 walks and he never had more than one baserunner in an inning. The lone run came on a HR from Lind.

Not surprising neither team had any success w/RISP. The Jays went 0 for 4, while the Rays went 0 for 5.

I don’t think I would have bunted w/Inglett in the 8th. Although he is facing a lefty, I’m not big on playing for the tie when you are on the road. Plus Lind is already in scoring position so a hit can score him anyway. Although Inglett was in the midst of an 0 for 9, so maybe him swinging away isn’t the best but even if he pulls the ball then it accomplishes the same thing as a sac bunt. Of course my preference would be to bring your best hitter w/RISP to the plate, who just so happens to be on the bench, in David Eckstein. The Rays probably would have brought in Balfour at that point but I’ll take that matchup over Inglett/Howell.

It was not a good game for basestealers as Rios, Crawford, and Iwamura were all caught stealing. In Crawford’s case he was actually picked off but you could see he was going as he took a step toward 2nd and then realized he was dead.

There was almost a costly mental mistake from Rios in the 2nd inning. After he caught the fly ball from Hinske against the wall he didn’t throw the ball in right away as he started to jog it in. The problem was that was only the 2nd out and Navarro had already tagged and moved to 3rd. The Rays 3rd base coach picked up on it and had thoughts of sending Navarro home but Rios realized quick enough and got the ball in so it didn’t cost them any extra bases.

Let’s get to the stats:
NAdv: Upton
P-NAdv: Burnett (12)
WG: Wilkerson (3)