Rays dfa Burrell

[Bigsmc]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

Looking at the numbers the Rays pitching staff has been dominant. But there is no way they can keep up the current pace and they are gonna need to add a bat if Upton, Pena, Blalock, etc dont start to hit. Thier team hitting stats are pretty much league avg across the board with the exception of runs and RBI's which indicates very timely (and in a lot of cases possibly lucky) hitting which is likely to trend the other way at some point. It is getting 7 hits in a game but 5 of them in one inning leading to more runs than a team typically would get with 7 hits over 9 innings. Their team ERA is 2.82, the league average is 4.15. Thier per 9 innings numbers in regards to hits, walks, HRs allowed, K's and thier k/BB ratio are all very good but probably unusually so. But longterm they dont have a starter over 28, 2 of them are 24 and hellickson may be the best yet and he is still in the minors. If the cheapskates who own the team add a bat and a left handed RP (especially if Howell is not effective after being injured) they will be a very tough team to deal with.

Spot on Chuck. I would lean much more towards the lucky side of the hitting vs. the timely side. Average pitchers can shut them down on any given night.

Through yesterday their leadoff guy, Bartlett, is batting .243, Pena .183, Upton .214, Navarro .182 and your most used bench guys, Rodriguez .222 and Kapler .224.... You can't win a Championship with that in your line-up no matter how good your pitching is. They addressed one of their many problems, Burrell, they need to address the above players. You can afford to keep Bartlett, Pena and Upton in the line-up because they provide gold glove type work in the field, but the rest need to not see the light of day. Jaso (.313) should catch every day unless he's hurt, when Soppach comes back from injury, Navarro should pack his bags. He does not provide any defense to supplement anemic bat. Rodriguez and Kapler should provide once a month fill ins for resting players, no more. Once Matt Joyce retruns from his injury (which should be soon), he should provide some offensive punch after the All Star break. Ruggiano is also batting over .300 at Durham and has big league experience.

The bullpen has been average, then again, most bullpens are. If those guys were great pitchers, they'd be starters. Soriano is a minor upgrade, but every appearance is an adventure. He needs to get his **** together and be a closer.

JP Howell is not the savior the local media thinks he is.

Thankfully, their starting pitching is loaded and if one of them goes down, Hellickson is ready to roll.