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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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Rays second-half rotation to lead off with Shields, Niemann

Posted Jul 10, 2010 by Tribune Sports

Updated Jul 10, 2010 at 08:08 PM

ST. PETERSBURG—Rays manager Joe Maddon has set his pitching rotation coming out of this week’s All-Star break.

James Shields, Jeff Niemann and David Price will start next weekend against the Yankees in New York, and rookie Wade Davis and Matt Garza will pitch the next two games in Cleveland.

Maddon said the primary consideration was getting each of the starters an appropriate amount of rest. Garza drew the last spot because he started Monday, pitched in relief Wednesday and will pitch tonight. Price hasn’t pitched since Wednesday, but he is expected to start and pitch two innings in Tuesday’s All-Star Game. Shields will have a full week off before his next start.

The revised order splits up Shields and Davis, who are 7-9 and 6-9, but Maddon said that wasn’t the reason for changing.

“The biggest thing was trying to set them up and give them the most rest coming out of the break,” Maddon said. “There are other ways we could have done it with a different set of circumstances, how they wind up coming into the break or if David was not going to the All-Star Game. All those things were factored. So we sat down and talked about it, and it seemed to be the right thing.”

The Rays are 4-1 on the current homestand and they’ve won six of their last seven after taking a 9-3 loss to the Indians on Friday night. They’ll send Garza (9-5, 4.28) against lefty Aaron Laffey (1-2, 5.18) tonight.

Maddon’s lineup has Crawford at DH rather than left field to rest his left shoulder, which Crawford strained on a throw home June 24. With a lefty on the mound for the Indians, Carlos Pena is getting a day off, and Willy Aybar is starting at first. Gabe Kapler is in left field and Ben Zobrist in right.

Here are the lineups:

INDIANS

Michael Brantley, CF
Jayson Nix, 2B
Carlos Santana, C
Travis Hafner, DH
Austin Kearns, RF
Jhonny Peralta, 3B
Matt LaPorte, 1B
Shelley Duncan, LF
Jason Donald, SS
—
Aaron Laffey, LHP

RAYS

B.J. Upton, CF
Carl Crawford, DH
Evan Longoria, 3B
Willy Aybar, 1B
Kelly Shoppach, C
Ben Zobrist, RF
Sean Rodriguez, 2B
Gabe Kapler, LF
Jason Bartlett, SS
—
Matt Garza, RHP

Maddon