Rays Bang Out The A’s In Rays Fashion

The Rays won again last night beating the A’s 8-6. The two teams had counteroffers in the 3rd and 4th innnings with the Rays scoring 4 in the bottom of the 3rd, then the A’s scoring 4 in the top of the 4th and the Rays scoring 3 more in the bottom of the inning to win the two inning battle. There were a total of 25 hits in this game including home runs by Pat Burrell and Reid Brignac to help Wade Davis get another win underneath his belt.

I dont know if i’m ready to put “The Bat” in the middle of Pat Burrell’s name yet but I must say he is doing much better than last year. He hit a homerun in the 3rd and drove in 3 runs to give the Rays a lead for Davis. The consistency of  Burrell is still the main concern with him in the lineup. We know what he is capable of contributing by the stats of his previous years but unless he drives in 100 RBI’s and belts 30 homeruns he is still a huge bust to me. But I will take what I can get from him I guess, just as long as its better than his production last year.

Reid Brignac on the other hand has really impressed me with his bat so far. He is batting .286 with 2 homeruns and 6 RBI’s in 35 at bats. This is about half the at bats as the starters Jason Bartlett and Ben Zobrist but the numbers are close in production. John Jaso is another bat that has been very impressive with Dioneer Navarro serving his 2 game suspension and being a little banged up. Jaso is batting .500, has one homerun and 7 RBI’s in only 19 plate appearances. This is not what I expected from a guy who missed a pop up in foul terrritory against the Jays his first game. I  thought who the hell is this guy and when are we sending him back down. But showing from his productivity since, he must have just been a little nervous, as most of would be in our first game in the majors.

Wade Davis had a rough outing allowing 4 runs in 5 innings. Being at the game, I could tell he just wasnt all there on the mound. He threw way too many fastballs and when a team sees that his other pitches are not working the ball is going to be put in play somewhere and produce runs as they did in the top of the 4th. I will give it to Davis though, he seems to always face the ace of the other teams staff and that could be intimidating but he has kept his composure pretty well.

It’s a good thing the Rays score a lot of runs in the game because our wonderful bullpen consisting of Grant Balfour, Randy Choate, and Lance Cormier almost gave up the game giving up a total of two runs to let the A’s back in the game. This put Rafael Soriano in another save oppurtunity and got his 5th save of the year.