Stung by the Rays

Ya boy went down to St. Pete earlier this week with my dad to catch the first 2 games of the Rays/Red Sox series. I walked away from the first 2 games with 4 impressions.

1) The Rays are good. I mean really good. They are going to be in this race until the final day. People expect them to go on some long losing streak soon but I see differently. I saw Shields and Garza shut down the Sox and I have never seen any 2 pitchers do that in the Theo/Tito Era. With Shields, Garza, and Kazmir the Rays have 3 good pitchers that wont allow this team to go on a losing streak. Their bullpen is much improved with Dan Wheeler and Troy Percival at the back end. It'll be interesting to see how they handle the loss of Percival but with guys like Grant Balfour coming out of the pen throwing 99. Also, they come up with the hits when they need it. BJ Upton set the tone with a lead off home run on Monday. Evan Longoria came up with a huge hit on Tuesday as well as flash the leather and kill a Sox rally.

2) Rays fans are AWFUL. I cant emphasize this enough. They don't know how or when to cheer. On Tuesday, two loser in Johnny Gomes shirts were jumping up and down and giving each other high fives on the first out of the game! If you just walked in you would have thought they won the World Series. They bang their cowbells every chance they get. They explode if the Rays get a bloop hit in the 4th inning with 2 outs. On Monday, they were counting outs in the 7th. I know its their first real team in Tampa but still, they have seen Sox fans cheer for 10 years down there. You would think they learned something.

3) Something is wrong with Manny. Manny was 0-11 in this series. He was late on every fastball. He was going after every first pitch and he popped up on the first base foul line at least 5 times when I was down there. Manny has struggled recently and something has to be wrong. Either he misses Papi or his altercation with the traveling secretary is weighing on him. I don't know whats wrong but we need Manny to get hot again.

4) We miss Papi. With JD Drew playing out of his mind it hid the loss of Papi but now its starting to show its ugly head. In this series we have struggled to score runs. On Tuesday with 2 on, JD struck out looking on three pitches. In that situation, you know that David Ortiz is going to come through. As hot as JD Drew as been if you ask any pitcher they would still rather face Drew than David Ortiz.