Rays vs Jays Live Game Notes

Kman here from cold and not-so-sunny Tampa Flordia. Iâ’ll have a number of ballpark reviews coming later in the week but for now Iâ’ll just share some of my game notes & thoughts from the past two days of Rays vs Jays. Thatâ’s my rhyme of the day!

Iwamura looks to be the real deal. He’s solid in all aspects of the game, whether it be on the field or with his bat. I’m extremely impressed with his plate discipline, his contact (everything is hit hard) and his overall baseball knowledge. Leaving his great 9th inning bunt out of the equation, Akinori worked a couple of walks Saturday night when the Rays were down by six runs. Young hitters will sometimes try to get it back with one swing, but the veteran Iwamura realizes that base runners are of the utmost importance when trailing big early.

Rocco can’t field worth a lick, same with Crawford. They both get poor jumps and reads on balls off the bat. I’m sure I’ll take some heat with criticizing Crawford’s fielding, with some fool out there saying €œNo way, he’s awesome dude! I saw this play on sportscenter where he like jumped up and caught a ball. And another time he laid out and stole a triple. He’s like the man, ya know? Well, I don’t. The reason for all of the spectacular catches is pretty simple; he takes poor angles towards balls, slows up to make the pretty catch instead of running through, and appears to be concerned with looking flashy. Sure, his Range Factor is great but if he was more fundamentally sound he’d be a far better fielder. The Rays know this, and that’s why they stick him in LF, not CF like his speed would allow. Delmon on the other hand was the best of the three in RF, with good reads and a strong arm.

The Rays are young. No news there. They’re learning on the job, so I’m not going to fault them. But the younglings are striking out way too much. Some are hitting .400, but it’s not going to keep. Here we go: Upton 6 K, 1 BB , Delmon 5 K 0 BB, Dukes 2 K 2 BB. It’s early mind you, but Upton & Delmon might be on track for 100 K, 20 BB type seasons. Now I can live with this if the power numbers are there, but it’s not a good sign.

The Rays bullpen sucks. That’s all.

Janssen & Marcum are looking good in the pen. The ultimate question will be, do you move them into the rotation later on? With Chacin, Ohka & Towers in the bottom half of the rotation, would you rather take 90+ IP from Janssen in the pen or 170+ most likely less productive IP from a rotation spot?

That’s it for now; I’ll be back with some more thoughts & an overall ballpark review for the Trop later on in the week.