Texas Rangers Crush Tampa Bay Rays, Take Commanding ALDS Lead

Someone should tell the Tampa Bay Rays that the playoffs started and can we now stop calling James Shields “Big Game” James? Honestly, it’s terrible.

The Texas Rangers once again laid the smackdown on the Rays 6-0 and now lead their best-of-five ALDS 2-0. The Rangers have outscored the Rays 11-1 in the series.

There were a couple of story lines to this game.

First was the Rays offense, or lack thereof. Two hits! Really? Just two hits?

The Rays have just eight hits in two games and since starting Game 1 three-for-four, the Rays are just five-for-60. That’s an .083 average kids.

The guy who shutdown the Rays this game was C.J. Wilson. I thought Wilson did a really good job of mixing up his pitches and more importantly kept the ball down all game.

Wilson threw a combination of four-seam fastballs, changups, cutters, and curveballs to keep the Rays guessing all game. As I mentioned, he also kept the ball down in the zone busting cutters down and in to righties. Take a look at his plot chart courtesy of Pitchfx:

That my friends, is pitching down in the zone.

The other story of this game was the controversial call in the top of the fifth. Rangers 3B Michael Young appeared to go around on a pitch 2-2 pitch by the Rays' Chad Qualls.

The pitch was a nasty slider biting down and away from Young. It was pretty clear that Young went around. Pretty clear to everyone except first base umpire Jerry Meals. Meals ruled that Young didn’t swing and the rest is history.

In the same at-bat and of course on the very next pitch, Young belted a three-run HR to dead center to give the Rangers an insurmountable 5-0 lead. That hit was the back-breaker in the game.

Joe Maddon threw a hissy fit and got ejected from the game. Here is my issue with Maddon’s ejection.

If he honestly believed that Young went around, then argue the call when it happened. Don’t argue the call after something bad happens to your team. I thought that was a bad job by him.

Of course bad things are expected to happen to your team when you have Qualls pitching in the fifth inning. All signs point to bad ending if that’s the scenario.

The Rays will now try to attempt to win three in a row against the Rangers. The way the Rays are hitting, that is going to be a very tough task.

Game 3 is Saturday at 5:07 PM est.

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