This thing is starting to get really ugly.
And I'm not just talking about Kenny Rogers' performance last night, though that's certainly a good place to start. Rogers was way off, treating the strike zone (or would that be the baseball) like a wet bar of soap. Not only did his control problems make Rogers throw far too many pitches (109 in just 3 1/3 innings), but unlike the Tigers did for Scott Kazmir on Friday night, the Rays didn't let Rogers off the hook.
With two of their first three batters on base in the second inning, Tampa pounced on the opportunity with three straight hits by B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford, and Evan Longoria to bring in four runs, and effectively ended the game early. For the second night in a row, the Tigers put plenty of runners on base, but couldn't get the key hit to drive those runners in. The lower third of the order, in particular - Matt Joyce, Gary Sheffield, Edgar Renteria - left 16 hanging on base.
So once again, after looking as if they might finally get their shoulders above water, the Tigers have fallen back to the .500 mark. And up next is arguably Tampa's best starting pitcher in James Shields.
Roll Call
I couldn't join the GameThread fun last night, though I'm not sure how much fun there actually was once the Tigers fell behind 4-0.
Hopefully, ThaWalrus9, rook34, pfuhrmeister, explosivo2k2, densogirl, Wingz, ashmark, PBURGTIGER, MSU4LIF, and Tony K don't all feel like they need to wear paper bags after watching that one.