{"id":1568,"date":"2009-07-21T09:30:32","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T13:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mouthpiecesports.com\/soxblog\/?p=677"},"modified":"2009-10-16T21:09:33","modified_gmt":"2009-10-17T02:09:33","slug":"the-rays-are-much-better-than-we-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/1568\/the-rays-are-much-better-than-we-thought","title":{"rendered":"The Rays Are Much Better Than We Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Future generations will see the box score<\/a> from last night’s game and simply see the Sox won a good old-fashioned AL home run derby, and for all intents and purposes that’s awesome; considering the makeup of the Sox (and especially considering the makeup of the Rays) an air show was probably the only true recipe for success.<\/p>\n

The Rays, the thinking goes, are a team of jackrabbits and hot rods, built for old-timey baseball and the kind of fundamental, one-run-at-a-time game so many organizations espouse yet so few execute. This is probably mostly a testament to their collective youth and general speediness, but people often overlook one glaring element of the 2009 Rays’ offensive attack: they also hit a lot of home runs. Third-most in the American League, as of this writing, and more than even our beloved South Side Lumber Company.<\/p>\n

All of which brings us back to Monday’s matchup and the Rays’ three solo shots, which most certainly weren’t flukes and probably can’t be written off as a nonexistent threat throughout the rest of the series. Gavin Floyd certainly got lucky on a few plays tonight (although Carl Crawford’s inside-the-park home run was practically gift-wrapped by Scotty Pods), but it’s dismissive to say the Rays were doing anything out of the ordinary. If anything, they were only doing the other<\/em> thing they do, the dimension beyond their hilariously large lead in the stolen base column.<\/p>\n

So you take a team like the Sox, all long ball and whatnot, and you say they don’t stand a chance because the Rays can run, but the real problem rests not in the Rays’ legs but in their wholeness. Third in team average; second in on-base percentage; third in slugging; third in home runs; first in stolen bases; first in walks; Tampa Bay doesn’t just boast a good team, but a complete one, which is how you end up with bizarre outcomes like Monday night.<\/p>\n

Gavin Floyd gets shelled while only surrendering three runs, Bobby Jenks effectively blows a save while simultaneously recording one and the Sox somehow outslug and outrun the best-running and best-hitting team in the league. If this is what second place looks like, life on top might just be unbearable torture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Losing is losing and that’s all there is to it, so let’s just fill out the L column and call it a day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[77],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1568"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1801,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions\/1801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}