Tampa Bay Devil Rays: Dissolve Against White Sox, Sum Up Season so Far

They were the Rays that everyone is getting rather tired of, the Rays that seem brilliantly able at doing the impossible-for instance loading the bases with no outs, and not being able to drive in one single run (a big thank you goes out to the less than impressive Jason Bartlett for that one)

The offence wasn't all bad though; after all they churned out seven hits, and drew three walks, but only produced two runs. This has been the story so far-there have been enough hits, but not enough that count (RBI's).

So, despite getting ten men on base, only two of them made it all the way around the diamond.

This was even after Evan Longoria's mistake-recovery/good luck, when he shot off third base after a bunt, but found himself in a rundown between third and home. With some good cutting he managed to beat out the third baseman, catcher and hurrying second baseman and make it safely back to third, with Gomes on second.

DiFelice went to first on a rather professional HBP, which drew Haynes who popped out, and Bartlett who got his first of two GIDP's.

This gave little support to Jeff Niemann, who had performed well over the first two innings, but then lost control, which, combined with errors led to eight runs to his name through just 3 and 1/3 innings, but only 5 earned.

Then, the highlight of the Rays' year so far, the bullpen, stepped in, and between Chris Birkins and Scott Dohmann put down 5 and 2/3 innings of one run baseball. Granted, the nine run deficit looked hard to overcome, but, on a different day this would have been the performance that gave the offence a real chance to win the game.

And that's what the bullpen has been doing this year, putting in solid relief appearances, between Dohmann, Wheeler, Miller, Howell, Percival, Glover and now Birkins.

The only exception seems to have been Al Reyes, holding the highest ERA of all the bullpen pitchers, and now on the 15 day DL after getting into a bar fight on his birthday (that's not the official reason you'll hear, but its not too hard to connect the dots)

And that was the Rays White Sox, the only thing not mentioned was what was quite possibly the longest home run ever hit in Tropicana Field by Jim Thome, hit to right field and rebounding off the C ring catwalk-had the catwalk not gotten in the way that ball may have quite possibly made a hole in the wall behind the right field seats!

Go Rays!