Raking it in

I guess I've been running good lately at least in some areas.  Last night I got to use the Rays tix I won last week to see a very enjoyable game.  The PQ, my middle child and his girlfriend joined me at the game.  I expected the game to be low scoring as David Price and Justin Verlander were pitching.  Not to mention the Rays are not scoring in bunches right now.

Verlander was not sharp.  He threw a lot of balls, could not get his breaking stuff over consistently and did a good job just giving up 4 runs.  He was very leery of pitching to Carlo Pena - not sure why as Pena isn't hitting his weight - and Ben Zobrist who has finally gotten his batting eye back.  Verlander threw 30 pitches in the first inning while giving up a run and 25 more in the 2nd though no runs came in.  Price was sharp getting a lot of pitches over with good movement.  Almost no one hit a ball hard against him.  He threw 78 pitches in 7 innings but his back tightened up and he left at the start of the 8th.  Hopefully not serious.  But if this game is anyone's story, it belongs to Desmond Jennings

Everyone expected Jennings to come out and be a star this year.  But an early season injury knocked him out of the lineup for about 20 games and he hasn't gotten his swing back yet.  His defense on the other hand has been excellent which is more than I can say for most of the team.  In the top of the 3rd he chased down a flyball into foul ground and went over the wall to make a terrific catch.  Made it onto ESPN's top plays.  He came up to bat to lead off the bottom of the third and took the 2nd pitch over the left field wall.   In the 5th inning he made a nice running catch at the foul line of a Prince Fielder fly ball then came up in the bottom of the inning and crushed a fastball for his 2nd homer.  Hopefully he has his hitting eye back and not a moment too soon.  With their top two hitters on the DL (and no one knows when or if Longoria will come back now) they need to be able to score more than 2 runs in a game.  Luckily Zobrist seems to be heating up finally.  He was hitting around 200 most of the year but in the past few weeks has raised his average to 250.  Monumental by Rays standards.  He crushed a homer last night plus a single and a walk.  When you see guys like Cabrera and Fielder batting you think how great it would be to have a guy like that on your team.  We do but he hasn't played since May 1.  If Longoria doesn't come back by the All Star break or a little later I don't think the Rays make the playoffs.  They just don't have consistent hitting and their fielding, because of all the people they have to move around, has been horrible.  No errors last night which is a first for them and 3 nice double plays.  Even with Longo, the AL East is so tough that they might not make it.  Doesn't help when 2 of your starting pitchers are also out.  At least they are not short of pitchers unlike say the Yankmees.  With ole man Pettite out for 8 weeks and Sabathia now on the DL they had better out hit some teams cuz they won't out pitch them too often.  Looked like Phil Hughes was getting it together for a while but he got lit up his last outing as well.

So the Rays took down a 4-2 win that resembled many of their wins from previous years, good defense, enough hitting and some excellent pitching.  Price served up one gopher ball to ex Ray Delmon Young but he completely shut down Cabrera and Fielder.  The other run was just bad luck as he had 2 strikes on Santiago and threw a nice tailing fastball away that Santiago threw his bat at and managed to push it right down the rightfield line for a double.  Cabrera and Fielder both hit hard grounders to advance him home.  Outside of that I don't think any baserunners got to second.  And the home team fans went home happy.  The guy a few rows in front of me was not so happy as he said, "everytime I come to see Verlander pitch, he loses".  I thought Verlander battled hard but just didn't have his best stuff.  He threw 120 pitches in 6 innings then took a seat.  Against a lot of teams he probably wins a 6-5 kind of game as one of his monsters mashes a 3 run homer but Price really didn't give them a chance. 

I said I had been running good this week.  Besides the Rays tix I also managed to score a $50 gift card to Amazon.  There is a cooking show my wife and child sometimes make me watch called "The Pioneer Woman".  She cooks a lot of homestyle and ranch type cooking (she and her hubby own a ranch in Oklahoma) and puts a healthy spin on most of them since she is cooking for her kids and family.  I like to cook but I really don't care much for cooking shows by and large.  Hers is tolerable.  She also has a blog and the daughter clued me in that a trivia quiz was being run Wed night and this one was all about Spielberg movies.  The first to get 100 on the quiz won a $250 Amazon gift card, 2nd got $150, and 3 other names were drawn of people who got 100 for a $50 card.  Mine was drawn
and hello gift card.  Now what do I buy?  Some more poker book downloads is possible.  Also a watch I was looking at, watch whore that I am.  Though I'd still have to pay a portion out of my own pocket as well.  The daughter said when she found out "Now you can buy me that shirt".  Uh no I don't think so, I spent enough on her the past 2 weeks I think. 

Well that wraps up the week.  We do go and play some poker Saturday.  Maybe I'll post about that.