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Roger Mooney

Roger Mooney covers the Tampa Bay Rays for The Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and News Channel 8. He has covered the Rays since their first season in 1998, including 11 years for the Bradenton Herald. Roger has also covered Florida, South Florida and Florida State football, the Bucs and the Lightning.

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It’s OK to use those bats during the first few innings

Posted Sep 21, 2010 by Roger Mooney

Updated Sep 21, 2010 at 11:38 AM

ROGER MOONEY
NEW YORK – That the Rays had the go-ahead run at the plate in the ninth inning during Monday’s 8-6 loss to the Yankees says a lot about their ability to keep plugging.

Heck, the one-run inning off Yankee closer Mariano Rivera was impressive in that they had two hits and added another runner when Dan Johnson was hit by a pitch with two outs.

Problem was, the Rays trailed by three runs heading into their last at-bat, and Ben Zobrist’s leadoff ground-rule double to right was the Rays only extra-base hit of the game.

Now we know the Rays are very good at scoring runs late. They have scored 105 runs in the eighth inning, while allowing only 50.

But a few runs early wouldn’t hurt. In fact, it might help.

This team just didn’t get off to fast starts.

Just look at their last four games against the Yankees.

They were held to one hit through seven innings by CC Sabathia during the first game last week at the Trop, with the lone hit being a two-out single by Kelly Shoppach in the third inning.

Ivan Nova allowed only a first-inning single by Carl Crawford through four innings.

Phil Hughes took a perfect game into the fifth inning before allowing a leadoff single to Evan Longoria.

On Monday, Nova allowed another first-inning single to Crawford and took a one-hitter into the sixth.

Add the Angeles series and the Rays are .121 the first time through the order with just two runs in their last seven games.

A team can survive that with solid starting pitching, but outside of David Price and Wade Davis, the Rays are coming up short there, as well.

So it’s no surprise the Rays are 3-4 in those games with two of those wins coming in extra innings.

Of all the things to be frustrated about after Monday’s loss – another poor start from Matt Garza, a bullpen snafu that prevented Randy Choate from pitching to Curtis Granderson – manager Joe Maddon was more irked by the lack of early offense.

“The offense, if we could just take advantage earlier in the game,” he said. “We do so well late in the game, we’re really a good latter part of the game team, if we could just get a little more involved early. Like we talked at the beginning of the season getting off to a good start can really impact our season, getting off to a good start in the game, getting on top, the other guys might come back but you’ve built this little momentum and cushion, so we need to do a better job in the first at-bats, first time through the lineup kind of thing, would really benefit us, because we’re really good late, which is a wonderful attribute. I’m not complaining about it. I would like to get out of the chute a little better.”