Here's to the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays

American League Champions!

No, that team in the World Series was not the same team we saw from May through the ALCS. I leave the Major League season frustrated, disappointed and totally 100% PROUD of my team!

Here's what they're saying...
St. Pete Times:
Rays miracle season over, but its effects will last - http://www.tampabay.com/sports/baseball/rays/article881466.ece#comments

World Series: Remember the Tampa Bay Rays' good times - http://www.tampabay.com/sports/baseball/rays/article881459.ece

Rays have less time to prepare for next season after World Series run - http://www.tampabay.com/sports/baseball/rays/article881410.ece

Tampa Tribune:
Dream Ends, But It Was a Summer to Remember - http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/oct/30/na-bell-tolls-for-rays-bell-tolls-for-rays/

Maddon Never Wavered - http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/oct/29/300044/w1-maddon-never-wavered/sports-rays/

Rays Come Up Short On Game's Biggest Stage - http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/oct/30/300033/w1-rays-come-up-short-on-games-biggest-stage/sports-rays/

It's cold in the deep, deep south

Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy are looking for winter coats and ice skates! Hell has officially frozen over!

As improbable… As unbelievable… As preposterous as it sounds, the Tampa Bay Rays (yes THOSE Rays!) are going to the World Series!

In a sign of what they’ve become to the Tampa Bay Area, during the Bucs Sunday night game in Raymond James Stadium against Seattle a Warrick Dunn 1-yard run was greeted by the fans in the stadium with wild cheers.

Was it because Dunn scored a TD or gained a first down? Nope! It was because fans had been made aware (via the scoreboard, their blackberries, Rays’ radio broadcasts and their in-stands neighbors) that the Rays had just tied the game on Carlos Pena’s first-to-home dash in the fifth inning. Chants of “Let’s Go Rays” could be heard on the Buc’s radio broadcast!

For the first ten years of their existence the Rays were an exercise in futility. They finished in last place nine (!) times in those ten years – including 2006 and 2007 – and never finished higher than fourth.

Their team record for wins coming into this season was 70 – SEVENTY(!) – in 2004.

Lofty goals for this season among long-time fans included finishing at or above .500 and finishing third in the AL East.

Now they’ve gone from worst to first – Wild Card qualifier, AL East Champs, ALDS winners and now American League Champions!



And how sweet was it that Rocco Baldelli – after all that he’s been through physically and emotionally the last few years – was the guy who delivered the game winning RBI??


The last team to go from worst record in MLB to the World Series? The 1991 Atlanta Braves. Sure, those Braves lost the Series – possibly the best World Series in history – to the (also worst-to-first) Minnesota Twins. However, that year jump-started a run of 14 straight playoff appearances for the Braves.

Can the Rays follow that Braves example? In today’s AL East, it will be very difficult. The Yankees and Red Sox spend money like the federal government and the Blue Jays are not far behind.

Still, there are similarities to those early-90’s Atlanta teams that are unmistakable. It starts with pitching.

Atlanta had Glavine, Smoltz and Avery who were home-grown. Tampa Bay has Shields, Sonnanstine and Price.

Atlanta traded for Maddux – Tampa Bay traded for Kazmir and Garza.
Neither team has a bullpen that they can count on in the playoffs, especially at the closer spot. Atlanta struggled through guys like Alejandro Pena, Mark Wohlers and John Rocker. The Rays have had Troy Percival (past his prime) and Dan Wheeler.

On the bench, the Braves had (have) Bobby Cox who had been in the game for decades and had finally found the right place for his managerial style. The Rays have Joe Maddon who spent decades with the Angels organization before finally getting his shot to manage – he hasn’t disappointed.

There are a lot of similarities.

The Rays accomplished this championship with the second-lowest payroll in MLB - $44 million.

The good news for Rays’ fans is that many of the young stars on this team are locked up for a few years already. Here’s a great article from MLB.com’s Jim Molony regarding how the team was built. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081006&content_id=3600016&vkey=news_tb&fext=.jsp&c_id=tb&partnerId=rss_tb

Rays players and the year their contract ends (includes club option years)

2009	2010	2011	2012	2014	2016
Bradford	Pena	Wheeler	Kazmir	Shields	Longoria
Floyd	Crawford	Baldelli	Price
Miller	Iwamura
Niemann

There are some players – such as Garza, Navarro, Upton, Jackson, Howell, Aybar, Sonnanstine, and Riggans – whose contracts are up after this year. They won’t be able to sign them all, but those first three are critical to maintaining this team.

Navi handles this staff very well and has finally started to produce offensively like the Yankees (who drafted him) and the Dodgers (who groomed him) thought he would. He’s critical to keep.

Upton is one of the brightest young stars in the game, and has hit seven home runs this post-season after struggling through injury all season. He’s still learning to play center field after being drafted as a shortstop, yet when you watch him glide around the outfield you see multiple Gold Gloves in his future. He’s critical to keep.

Garza is only the ALCS MVP. He’s been great ever since he had that dust-up with Navi in Texas mid-summer.



Before the all-star game, Garza was 7-5 with a 3.96 ERA. After the mid-summer classic, he went 4-4 but his ERA was only 3.39 in the second half.

Most importantly last night – in the biggest game of his young career – Garza stepped up and knocked it out of the park! Pitching into the 8th and allowing only

He’s critical to maintain the rotation with Shields, Kazmir and Price.
So the payroll will rise, but that’s to be expected. How much it rises is the key, but I’d expect closer to $64M than $44M next season.

Speaking of David Price, all the rookie did was step into the biggest game in team history in the biggest situation of the post-season thus far and deliver the biggest win in team history.



He enters with the bases loaded and two outs in the eighth and strikes out the Sox hottest clutch hitter, J.D. Drew. Then when it made the most sense to pull the rookie after that emotional out, Maddon sends him out there and he walks the first guy to bring the tying run to the plate with nobody out. What does the rookie do? He strikes out the next two guys – including Boston captain Jason Varitek – and gets the game-ender on a ground ball to 2B.

"I knew that David had a lot of emotional bullets left," Maddon said. "[I] talked to him before the game, and he's not impacted by the situation. So there's Drew [at the plate] -- the right guy, I thought, was David Price."

Price has top-of-the-rotation stuff, and may supplant Shields in that spot as early as next Spring.

The future is certainly bright in St. Petersburg; however it’s the present that we’re concerned with right now. It’s poetic, don’t you think Tampa Bay fans, that the Rays will have to beat a Philadelphia team to win the title?
The Bucs had to go through the Eagles and they did so by closing down Veteran’s Stadium in the NFC title game.

The Lightning had to go through the Flyers in the second round of the NHL playoffs on their way to the Stanley Cup in 2005.

Now the Rays have to take out the Phillies to win the World Series.

Here’s to hoping that the pattern continues! Go Rays!

Moral victories are for losers

"Almost" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but this time "almost" feels a little bit different. It feels like the 2008 Huskers could actually get one of those "signature wins" that everyone talks about. The disappointing thing to me is that they had Tech right where they wanted them and they couldn't quite close the deal. It was encouraging and heartbreaking at the same time.

Here are my thoughts...

Positives:

• Encouraging to me that Shawn Watson ran the ball with both Marlon Lucky and Roy Helu - and he stuck with it! Sure it was barely over 100 yards, but it was effective for only the second time this year (NM State).
• I thought that Lucky played an excellent game in all facets. He ran well between the tackles, was patient, caught the ball well (as usual) and picked up a number of blitzing 'backers.
• Encouraging also that NU actually stopped Tech twice and controlled the time of possession by better than 2-to-1.
• Watson had a great game plan that put NU in position to win the game.
• Even better effort in OT on the blocked FG. I really thought they'd win it after that!
• Joe Ganz threw the ball away well all game long, and I think he was trying to throw that last one away in OT but was hit at the same time and the ball got away from him.

Negatives

• Discouraging to me that NU is still making the stupid mental errors (false starts and personal fouls) that are costing them games.
• I'm not sure what's up with Ndamukong Suh, but he needs to cut out the damned personal fouls. This is now two games he's potentially cost us with that crap! First Va. Tech and now T. Tech. He draws the personal foul and then is standing on the sideline when they score because Pelini pulls him after the penalty. Shukree Barfield came in and got driven off the ball like he was a high school freshman. He was on his back in the end zone six freaking yards from the line of scrimmage!
• What the hell was Armando Murillo doing on that 4th and 4 when Michael Crabtree went deep? How do you let a guy who was a Heisman finalist as a freshman get behind you that far!?! The worst part about that play to me - the post game interview on FSN with Graham Harrell where he said that the center wasn't even supposed to snap the ball but didn't get the memo evidently. They were just going to try and draw NU off and then punt.

It was a sad loss, but NU competed with and really handed it to the #7 (probably #4 or 5 next week) team in the country on their own field. They should have won the game.

Game balls from me go to Joe Ganz, Todd Peterson, Mike McNeill, Meno Holt, Niles Paul, Matt Holt, Larry Asante and Ty Steinkuhler.

How about Matt Holt stepping in as a true freshmen (a walk-on no less!) when Cody Glenn and Phil Dillard are both hurt and having 8 tackles (7 solo)? NU might have found a true "diamond in the rough".

Aside from his stupid personal foul, I thought Suh played very well in the middle against that huge OL of Tech's.

Jacob Hickman certainly redeemed himself after a poor performance against Missouri also.

All in all, I'll take it but I'm disappointed that they lost. The game was theirs for the taking and they blew it when it counted the most. As the title says, moral victories are for losers and the bottom line is that NU is now 3-3 when they could very well be 5-1 with some better play between the ears.

Virginia Tech thoughts...

I will preface this by saying that I haven't watched the film yet. I'm burning the DVD as I type and will watch it later today/tonight.



That said, I thought that the effort was good Saturday night but the execution and (especially) the play-calling on offense left a LOT to be desired. I'm of the opinion right now that the game was over early on when Roy Helu ran for 4 yards on first down, 4 yards on second down and then Watson threw a pass on 3rd and 2!!?? Ganz misfired and we had to punt - it was blocked for a safety and the ball was rolling downhill for the wrong team.



Larry Asante played poorly.



Joe Ganz played poorly.



The offensive line - especially Mike Huff and Mike Smith - played poorly.



The WR weren't able to get open much, but that was expected given Va Tech's corners.



Macho Harris is VERY, VERY good and will be a star on Sundays.



Tyrod Taylor's athleticism was not on display for the most part, but then when you're running for 7 and 8 yards a pop between the tackles there's no reason to take a chance getting your QB hurt. Taylor did miss on a couple of throws that helped NU hold the Hokies to FG where they could have had TDs.



In all, the team played hard and played to the final gun. That's something that I'm not sure we saw last year, so that's encouraging.


For those who say that Suh and Bo lost the game on the late hit and then personal foul late, I disagree. I believe it was lost because Watson chose not to run the ball on that 3rd and 2 way back in the first quarter.



Thoughts?

Is it time for Price?

It's mid-September and the Tampa Bay Rays are still in first place. They've overcome injuries this year to Aki Iwamura, Carlos Pena, Troy Percival (3 times), Dioner Navarro, Jason Bartlett and (most recently) Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria, and B.J. Upton to maintain a 2.5 game lead heading into this weekend's three-game series in the Bronx with the dreaded (and nearly eliminated!) NY Yankees.

Guys like Gabe Gross, (former HUSKER) Dan Johnson, Ben Zobrist and Willy Aybar have stepped up and helped this team to victories at different points this year. It's been a magical year in the Tampa Bay area - not that "fans" there would know since they seem insistent on staying home from the Trop (but that's a different rant for a different day).

That's right folks, the Rays have a magic number of 16 to clinch the division.


In today's St. Pete Times, columnist John Romano calls for manager Joe Maddon to change the role of closer Percival. I've fought this idea personally because Percy is the only guy in that bullpen with significant closing experience in September and October. He's been to (and won) a World Series with the Angels while guys like Grant Balfour (with his 97-MPH heater and mound-mumbling) and Dan Wheeler (with his 89-MPH "warmer" and being Maddon's son-in-law) have not been in the same type of pressure-cooker as Percival.

I love Wheels and Balfour in setup situations - just as I do J.P. Howell, Trever Miller (this year) and the rest of that 'pen. But face it fans - Percy is the only guy qualified to close right now.

Now I know that I just bemoaned the lack of experience of Wheeler and Balfour as a reason to keep them as setup guys, but I have a different idea for someone to replace Percival. Why don't the Rays pull a page from the Yankees playbook and give David Price a shot? New York did that with (former HUSKER) Joba Chamberlain and it seems to have worked out pretty well for them. It didn't hinder Chamberlain's ability to transition to being a starter this year.

Give Price a shot for a couple of games and see what he can do? Try him in the 7th or 8th innings and watch him blow away a few hitters and then tell me that he isn't the man for the job. I vividly recall his first appearance this past March during Spring Training at Legends Field in Tampa against these very Yankees. He blew away three straight after hitting one batter.

There's a reason that he was the No. 1 pick in the draft and moved from A to AA to AAA this year (and dominated at each level). He's SPECIAL!

I know all of the arguments about clubhouse cameraderie and upsetting the "mojo" of a team already in first place and with a legitimate shot at the best record in the majors, but Price has that "it" factor and could be the guy to get the Rays over the hump and into their first post-season. Why not give it a try? It can't be any worse than watching Percival struggle through another 9th. When was the last time Percy went through an inning without at least bringing the tying run to the plate? My heart can't take it anymore! Try Price!