Rays Getting It Together Finally

Last night against the Mariners, the Rays actually looked like the AL Championship team of a year ago. The Rays have been struggling to get their offense in a rhythm. Last night they got 15 hits and 9 runs. All nine runs were scored without a home run, which is pretty good. They Rays had exactly 50% of their runs scored prior to last night come from the long ball, that's the most in the majors. It sounds like a good thing, because home runs are cool right? But, it's not good to only have runs scored from home runs, that means that you're not manufacturing runs. When you're hitting as many home runs as the Rays were hitting you should be scoring a lot more runs. They're not scoring more runs than other teams really, they've just been hitting a lot of solo shots that give you only one run. When a team is doing well offensively, it's when they can get guys on base and hit them in. The Rays have a lot of speed, so what their offense should look like is this: Lead off hitter gets on with first, he steals second and then the second batter gets a hit and drives him in. That's Rays baseball. What they did last night was exactly that, they played Rays ball. They got hits and moved the runners around the bases with "small ball." I like home runs just as much as the next guy, but I understand that if you want to make it through the whole season you have to manufacture runs with good base running and getting hits when you need them most. The pitching for the Rays also looked pretty good. Nieman pitched 5 and 2/3 and pitched very well, he had a perfect game going into the 5th. When they took him out the bullpen combined to let up only one hit and one walk, while striking out four. This is the Rays team that I know and love.