The hitting and pitching doubly sucked last night. 16 Left on base. Ugh. Navarro is the ONLY Rays hitter above .300 right now. And the A's have sent all left handed pitchers against the Rays. Who didn't get a hit last night? Hinske as a PH, Upton, Aybar, Gnomes (batting average .192!) and Gross, also a PH. Aki, Crawford, Longoria and Pena can't do it all themselves. Zobrist did get a hit but also left 2 men on base. Sonnastine and Miller gave up a combined 6 earned runs (ouch!) and the Reyes and Hammel added insult to injury with one earned run apiece.
The Rays have now lost 9 of 12 games overall. Boston and the Yankees (on one hell of a streak) both won their games. Even Toronto got 10 runs (a team that is better known for their pitching rather then their hitting) and beat Baltimore. Toronto leap frogged over Baltimore for 4th place and 9.5 games back. Baltimore is 10 games back at the bottom. New York in 3rd place is 3.5 games back and Boston is in 2nd place only a half game back from the good guys. The Rays need to take the series with the A's considering that they have more away games then home games in the second half. With how close the AL East is, the every game counts cliché comes to mind. Shields is up in an afternoon appearance. We can only hope that the bats come alive, Shields is Shields and the defense has worked the kinks out.
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