McCarthy Stifles Offense as Rays Continue to Struggle

The Rays were dominated last night by the A’s Brandon McCarthy 6-1 on their way to their fourth loss in five games. The Rays are officially playing as badly as they did at the beginning of the year and right now no facet of their game seems to be effective. The starting pitching, which is the key to the Rays success over the long season, has not been pitching late into the games. The offense, which has been scoring some runs, has not been able to manufacture the clutch run when they need it. Of course the bullpen been a major culprit as well. Rays fans can usually count on a strong performance defensively, but Matt Joyce and B.J. Upton looked pretty bad in last night’s loss.

David Price was not very good as he gave up four runs over six innings with A’s able to push across single tallies from the third through the sixth. Brandon McCarthy kept the Rays scoreless through the seventh inning. The lone offensive output came from Ben Zobrist, who homered in the eighth. He is quietly putting together a very effective season. The batting average and RBI count are not that high, but with the homer, Ben already has 51 extra base hits on the year, which leads all major league hitters.

Before the game, the Rays sent down Cesar Ramos and brought up Jay Buente, a right-hander. Buente’s only other action in the majors this year was pitching for the Marlins against the Rays. He gave up three runs and was tagged with a loss on May 22. He arrived at the game in the fifth inning was in the game by the seventh. He season ERA of 9.00 held steady as he gave up two runs in the eighth which effectively put the game away.

Player of the Game: Brandon McCarthy. McCarthy and his wife are very active on Twitter which was noticed by SI.com’s Hot Clicks. Jimmy Traina conducted a very funny interview with the couple which you can check out here.

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