First of all, I'm not out to convince you that Troy Percival is a bad relief pitcher. It's an unnecessary argument to make, as the assertion is pretty much backed with universal acceptance among Rays fans. This is even more true in the immediate aftermath of an event such as today's, when Percival loaded the bases and surrendered a grand slam in the 13th inning of a crucial intra-divison game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Still, I don't see myself as immune from the emotional swings of being a baseball fan, so I need an opportunity to vent. At the same time, I want to maintain a relatively level perspective on things. We can all blame the umpires and unleash our anger on them. Sometimes that's even the appropriate course of action to take, and I don't disagree with the premise completely in this case. But the fact of the matter is, the umpires are too easy a target. There are three teams that take the field for every game, and one of those teams has no fans and is constantly pummeled by the other two.

So while we can blame the intricacies of losses on the umpiring crew, doing so offers no sustainable solutions for future improvement. In what has quickly turned into the worst week of the season since the last week of the first half, Troy Percival has pitched in two games and surrendered six runs. Small sample size you say? Well, then ponder these facts:

So what's the point? Well, essentially this is a more eloquent and fact-based way of saying PERCY SUX!11!!111!! I'm not going to get into why Percival has become so poor, because quite frankly I don't know and neither do you. It could be the various injuries that have landed him on the DL this season still bothering him, or it could simply be a function of him breaking down over a long season. But without a reasonable degree of certainity, it's not worth making conjectures about. More importantly though, it doesn't really matter. September 6th is a little late in the season to be diagnosing things and making corrections.

In other words, I'm not exactly optimistic about finding a remedy for the 39 year old Percival's pitching woes in the last three weeks of the season, and there is sure as hell no room for experimentation in the playoffs. The question now concerns what the team can do to mitigate Percival's penchant for high-stakes meltdowns. The most obvious solution is to move him out of the closer's role in favor of someone like Dan Wheeler or Grant Balfour, but that doesn't get rid of the problem entirely. Is his penchant for blowing games any more palatable in the seventh or eighth innings than it is in the ninth, or 13th as the case may be?

I would suggest that the answer is no, and issue at that point becomes where you slot a guy like Percival if you don't want him in high-leverage situations at all. You might be able to get by stashing him in middle relief, but I for one would be very surprised to see the Rays, and manager Joe Maddon in particular, shuffle Percival off into obscurity so unceremoniously. Nor can I imagine Percival taking that too well.

But as the games get more and more crucial, and Percival keeps getting worse and worse, the need for action gets clearer and clearer. As painful as it may be to address the situation, the pain of inaction could potentially be a lot more.

via www.fangraphs.com

RIP Troy Percivals good standing among Tampa Bay Rays fans.

I'm not sure how to do these.

Shaun Marcum - Kinda Good

James Shields - Really Good

That's the word that comes up when people say that Edwin Jackson is better than Andrew Sonnanstine. It's the word thrown out there without any backing, other than a thought that Jackson is probably close to an approximate measure of his talent more consecutive times out than Sonnanstine. Here's the problem; if you're using that term to say Edwin is better, you should probably research whether Edwin's performances are consistent or not before stating it.

As you all know I like judging pitchers by their innings thrown, strikeouts, walks, homeruns, groundballs, liners, swinging strikes, and strike percentage. Pitch usage is also important, but for this piece's sake less important. What is the time frame for consistency? Over this season Sonnanstine's numbers are better in every meaningful regard, isn't that more important than a five or ten game stretch in the middle of season? Baseball is a game of streaks and slumps, starting pitchers are not immune to trends despite playing once every five days, in fact, they may be more prone to it. One disastrous start can ruin the numbers that the media and casual fans will look at (ERA).

Pitchers like James Shields and the great Roy Halladay are extremely consistent because they have the meaningful core components down. Do you know when the last time Halladay walked more hitters than he induced stringing strikes? July 12th, 2007 at Boston. Since that game he's started 43 games with 13 complete games. That's consistent. Shields hasn't been knocked out before going five since he tried knocking Coco Crisp out and only four times in his career.

Of course pitchers like Sidney Ponson are also consistent, consistently bad. Which raises the obvious point: consistency means nothing compared to the overall quality. If Sonnanstine has been the better pitcher over 28 starts, and he has, why would we put him in the bullpen for the playoffs based on a small sample size? On average Sonny goes more innings, strikes more out, walks less, gets more groundballs, and is shockingly only gets a tad less strikes swinging (Jackson has 7.19, Sonny has 6.79).

Make no mistake that we're talking about solely heading forward this season, you can argue Sonnanstine's ceiling is what we're seeing, and that's possible, although that's not necessarily a bad thing whether he ends up in the bullpen or another team. Edwin has an extremely high ceiling, and the "ifs" have existed since 2003. At some point Edwin's potential needs to show otherwise his arbitration status is going to leave the Rays likely paying more than one million dollars for a pitcher who isn't a million dollars better than the other available talent.

This season Sonnanstine has the best chance to give the Rays good starts because he has the best core talents. To win this season we need to make the right choice for the fourth starter in the playoffs, and that choice is undoubtedly Andrew Sonnanstine.

via www.fangraphs.com

Not much to say here, Balfour finally had another HR hit off of him, and the timely hitting just didn't come.

RAYS at Toronto

7:07; FSN Florida

RAYS RADIO/1250 AM

Pitching Matchup:

GO RAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had a conversation with a reader last night about Jason Hammel. Essentially he said the Rays needed to upgrade that mop-up role in case of an emergency. He went on to ask who would come in if a starter in the playoffs couldn't get out of the third which lead to an argument on whether that was even a relevant scenario.

Yes, it's possible a pitcher gets bombed in the playoffs but I went through the gamelogs to find the incidents where a Rays pitcher went less than four innings. It's happened six times all season. Here's the thing about Hammel, no he is not good, but currently he is used in situations less tense than every other reliever on the roster except Juan Salas. Hammel pitches once a week and the game is usually out of reach one way or the other. Yes last night was nasty and memorable because he gave up a load of runs but should come as no surprise to people who have paid attention to his non-ERA numbers, after all both his FIP and tRA are over 5.

So our mop-up reliever is the worst pitcher on staff and we're supposed to be upset about this? Yes David Price and almost all of Durham's rotation would be better, but Hammel's role is less than vital on this team and it's likely he won't be on the post-season roster to begin with.

This is going to be a bit unorganized but I have a few points to through out on Kazmir.

Six Innings

When you consider he had a 20+ pitch first and he ended his night five innings later with 98 total. After back-to-back sub-five inning starts to begin August Kazmir has went 5, 6, 6, 5.1, and now 6 in his last five starts.

Five walks/57% strikes

Kazmir's control was iffy tonight, look at the throw to Nady early on for proof. I'm not too happy about either measure, but with one hit countering the excess amount of free passes he didn't get burned. Which brings up...

One hit/11 strikes swinging

Encouraging.

Six groundballs/Five flyballs

Encouraging, although I would love to see just a few more of those flyballs turn into groundballs.

Seven strikeouts

Encouraging.

80% Fastballs

Dioner Navarro lied when he said Kazmir used all of his pitches. What he meant to say was Kaz used all one pitch. It worked tonight, but I still would like to see him mix his change and slider back into rotation more.