Hamilton Strikes Again, Rays Fall to Rangers 2-0

I feel like we need to make some stock recaps for the 2011 Rays season.  This would be an opportunity to use the "(Rays starter) pitched well, but the offense proved to be inept against Cy (opposing pitcher)" recap.  Like Cy Fister and Cy McCarthy before him, Cy Feldman confused the Rays bats to the tune of two hits and zero runs through six innings.  This is the same Scott Feldman who's high on innings pitched this year was four and two-thirds.

As the stock recap says, Jeremy Hellickson pitched well enough: 6IP, 2ER, 6H, 4BB.  Four walks might seem a bit much, but the zone tonight was tighter than Drake and Nicki Minaj (this reference was fed to me, I don't know what it means).

via www.brooksbaseball.net

Both sides were squeezed early on, but Rangers relievers Mike Adams and Neftali Feliz got a few of those calls outside the zone late.  The Rangers started the scoring when, on the first pitch of the sixth inning, Josh Hamilton straight-murdered a ball to the upper deck in right field.  The ball was was hit so deep that there were--thankfully--no fans around where it landed.  Hellickson would not settle down until allowing one more run, though, again, he appeared to get squeezed a bit in there. 

The Rays best scoring chance came off of Neftali Feliz in the ninth when The Legend, Sam Fuld, knocked a single to right and Desmond Jennings walked on five pitches.  Unfortunately, Johnny Damon would pop up to right on the very next pitch and even though Ian Kinsler dropped the ball, he was able to force out Jennings at second.  Evan Longoria would make some mighty hacks at a few 99MPH heaters before getting fooled on the offspeed pitch and grounding into the double play to end the game. 

The stock recap says this is where I say that tomorrow is another day and look forward to James Shields taking on Alexi Ogando at 8:05 PM.  Go Rays!