- Kevin Tall
- The face of a bad day at the office; stock photo
They say ya can’t win ‘em all.
They reek of triteness, no matter how accurate.
Sigh.
The Tampa Bay Rays’ world of late has been ruled by big arms and thunderous bats. They remembered to bring one of those home from the successful 5-1 road trip to the Great White North.
While Matt Joyce brought the boom in the bottom of the third inning, starting pitcher David Price’s big gun apparently didn’t clear customs in time for the trip home.
The lefty took a night off—and the loss in this 8-5 affair—from his usual, dominant awesomeness to mingle with mortal pitchers for the evening; Price was roughed up for five runs and a career-high 12 hits allowed in his four and one-third innings pitched.
Reliever Juan Cruz was there to put out the fire when the David Price Express derailed but damage done.
Price had allowed a run in the second but the boys had his back, tying it up in the bottom of the frame; Ben Zobrist walked and scored on a double by Casey Kotchman.
Three Halos’ outs later the Rays took the lead.
Reid Brignac led off the bottom of the third, reaching on a sky-high shot that…didn’t clear the infield. He popped, Erick Aybar dropped; score that one a big E-6. Sam Fuld followed that with the most legendary walk ever witnessed by Rays fans. Johnny Damon laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt to advance both runners to scoring position. A backward-K by B.J. Upton took a bit of shine off the threat but home-grown hero Joyce crushed the gift-wrapped 2-2 pitch from LAA starter Ervin Santana into the right field seats for a three-run lead.
The top of the fourth brought three more Angels' runs; the top of the fifth saw three hits, a run on a sac fly and Price hitting the bricks.
All told, Rays pitchers surrendered eight runs on 17 hits in a shelling at the hands of the now-15-11 Angels, who sit half a game back in the American League West behind the 15-0 Texas Rangers.
Rays fans were forced to settle for quality over quantity in the Friday night loss, racking up a mere four runs—only one of them earned—on four hits off of Santana. Upton launched a solo homer to left to lead off the bottom of the home half of the eighth but it was the proverbial trite “too little, too late” in this one.
This article appears in May 19-25, 2011.