Another day, another poor offensive performance for our guys. I guess with 3 regulars out of the lineup, it should be expected. Most teams would have troubles with that. This off-season, I felt like a broken record, saying how we had a very thin bench all the time. Well we do.
Great start for Romero tonight. One bad pitch to Ben Zobrist put up all the runs on the day. He went 7 innings in all, gave up just 5 hits and 1 walk while striking out 10. Add in 7 ground outs to 3 fly outs and you have a great start. Marc Rzepczynski and Frank Francisco pitched in with a scoreless inning each.
Our offense got just 4 hits and 2 walks (both by Jose Bautista. Corey Patterson had our only extra base hit, a lead off double in the 6th. We did have some hard hit balls that found gloves and Jose Bautista lead off the 9th with a walk giving us a shot at tying things, but he got himself picked off. Hard to get on the one guy who is actually hitting.
Jay of the Day? Ricky Romero (.098 WPA), the only guy that comes close to deserving it. Suckage Jays? Pick any one of the guys that were holding a bat. By the numbers Lind (-.164), Escobar (-.128), McCoy (-.125) and Arencibia (-.094) get the honor.
James Shields did pitch a very good game, for the Rays, he kept the ball at the bottom of the strike zone and was getting the calls there. Jay batters have a choice of watching those pitches at the bottom of the zone and get called out on strikes or swing at them, knowing you couldn't do much other than ground out. And when we did hit he ball hard, it found a glove.
Tomorrow we start a 4 game series in Arlington against the Rangers. Rajai Davis should be back Tuesday and Jesse Litsch will be called up to start Tuesday's game. Edwin Encarnacion should be back in the line up too. None of that will hurt.