Through six innings in St. Petersburg tonight, it looked like the Tampa Bay Rays had a chance to seize control of things with a typical Rays win. Even though they only had one hit against Colby Lewis, that hit was a solo homer from Desmond Jennings and they held a 1-0 lead. It wasn’t ideal, but when has anything been ideal for this Rays team in 2011?
Maybe as a reminder of how tenuous the Rays’ lead — both in the game and the series — was, the wheels fell off quickly in the top of the seventh. Adrian Beltre singled and Mike Napoli homered and within eight pitches 1-0 Rays was 2-1 Rangers. Price almost got out of the inning by recording two quick outs, but Joe Maddon pulled him after a Chris Gentry single. That may have been Maddon’s biggest mistake of the season. Brandon Gomes came in and walked Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus on nine pitches, then was replaced with JP Howell. Howell served up a two-run single to Josh Hamilton to run the score to 4-1. Juan Cruz finally got the last out of the inning when Hamilton tried to swipe second and John Jaso faked the throw and fooled Elvis Andrus.
The Rays tried to mount a comeback by loading the bases against Darren Oliver in the bottom of the seventh, but Alexi Ogando put the fire out by only allowing one run. The Rays drew even closer when Desmond Jennings took Mike Adams deep in the eighth. A second solo shot just wasn’t quite enough to even things up and Neftali Feliz nailed things down in the ninth to get the Rangers their 4-3 lead.
There will be a lot made of Maddon’s decision to pull Price (perhaps justified given Price’s late season struggles this year) and his decision to go to Howell to face Hamilton (Howell has been fantastic against lefties this year and great since August 1st, but he gave up quite a few hits in high-leverage situations during the Rays’ mad dash to the playoffs), but the big story from this one is Napoli. As is well documented by now, Napoli was unwanted by both a bad GM (Tony Reagins, since fired by the Angels) and a good one (Alex Anthopolous, who’s seemingly fleeced everyone in the last two years) this winter, which is why he ended up in Texas. Napoli mashed his way to a 1.046 OPS during the season and his tear has now extended into the playoffs. Getting Mike Napoli for Frank Francisco is one of the reasons that Jon Daniels has his team on the verge of their second straight ALCS.
Of course, nothing is over until the lights are officially out, especially when the Rays are involved. For tomorrow afternoon’s Game 4, the Rays are planning on sending Jeremy Hellickson out to face Matt Harrison, who’s likely the weakest starter the Rangers will send to the mound in this series. A win gets them a Game 5, where they can choose between the electric Matt Moore and steady James Shields to face CJ Wilson, who they shelled in Game 1.
It’s hard to deny that the Rangers are in awfully good shape, though. Hellickson has a lot of innings on his 24-year old arm in 2011 and no matter what, the Rangers have home field advantage in Game 5. The Rays probably won’t go down quietly, but they’ve got another big mountain to climb if they want to get out of the two games to one hole that they’re in right now.
