Ruggiano delivers in clutch

Posted Mar 6, 2010 by Roger Mooney

Updated Mar 6, 2010 at 09:36 PM

By ROGER MOONEY
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PORT CHARLOTTE Justin Ruggiano ended Saturday’s game against the visiting Red Sox in dramatic fashion, with a two-run blast in the bottom of the ninth that cleared the boardwalk beyond left field and almost reached the pond behind Charlotte Sports Park.

Only one person has hit a ball farther at the Rays spring home, and he was Ray Sadler, a non-roster invitee trying to make last year’s team.

“We got to put a stake down there for his pond: Sadler’s Pond,” Ruggiano said.

Much like Sadler, Ruggiano is a long shot to make the 2010 Rays, but his work at the plate during the ninth inning Saturday could go a long way toward making him a viable option should there be a need for another outfielder this summer.

With the score tied at 4, and Fernando Perez on third base after a leadoff triple, Ruggiano simply tried to hit the ball up the middle.

Instead, he pulled one to left field that carried the Rays to a 6-4 victory.

“See what happens when you try to stay patient and drive the run home from third? Good things happen,” Perez said.

That’s one of the objectives for the Rays this spring: be more productive with a runner on third and less than two-out.

The key is to try and score the runner any way possible: with a hit, a ground ball up the middle, a fly ball to the outfield as long as it’s deep enough to score the runner, and if the ball is driving from right-center to left-center, it almost always will be.

“We’ve been working on that,” Ruggiano said. “Our mindset is middle of the field. If you go out to any of our practice fields you’ll see the lines we have drawn (in right-center and left-center), and that’s our focus, from left-center to right-center. He kept pounding me in, so just trying to get the head out there.”

Rays manager Joe Maddon was pleased with Ruggian’s at-bat and not because it resulted in a walk-off win.

“I’m seeing a better, more focused at-bat,” Maddon said. “He’s not trying to hit a home run right there, but ends up hitting a home run.”

It was Ruggiano’s first walk-off home run in a Rays uniform. He said it was also his first chance to win a game for the team in the ninth inning.

Ruggiano, who played 52 games with the Rays during the 2007 and 2008 seasons, said he never gets the chance. He was lifted for pinch-hitter Eric Hinske with a runner and the Rays trailing the Astros by a run in June of 2008. Hinske singled and later scored the winning run. Ruggiano was lifted in Boston for Dan Johnson during the ninth-inning of a one-run game Sept. 9 of that same season, and well, we all know what Johnson did.

“The Rays should keep me around, because it seems every time I’ve gotten pinch-hit for, it’s ended up in a victory,” Ruggiano said.