Apparently Wade Davis took the news of his impending move to minor league camp pretty hard. After it was announced Saturday that today's game would "most likely" be his final start of the spring for the big league Rays, Davis was shelled by Boston lineup.
Davis had allowed just one baserunner in his first 5.2 innings of spring. He had K'd Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixiera in consecutive ABs and retired reigning NL MVP, Albert Pujols twice. This earned strong praise from pitching coach Jim Hickey, who said Davis was a candidate for the 5th spot. Realistically we all knew this was Hickey trying to "coach'em up" and enstill confidence in his 23 year old RHP future stud. Nonetheless up until today's game you could've made an argument that Davis was having the best spring amongst the candidates.
The Rays made no secret of their plans after Saturday's announcement and most of us will still remember Davis's strong starts, but this one was definitely not one to remember. In 2.2 innings of work against a Red Sox lineup that was missing: Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, David Ortiz, Jason Bay, Mike Lowell and Jacoby Ellsbury, Davis allowed six earned runs on eight hits and two walks. He allowed a home run to Nick Green. Yes, that same guy we got for Jorge Sosa way back when. He was also taken deep by Zach Daeges. I'm sure it's not the way Davis or any of us for that matter wanted to see him wrap up his portion of spring with the big club, but we still saw a ton of good and hopefully we will see a lot more of it sooner than later.
As for the rest of the game there wasn't much else going on. A day after pounding the Red Sox for 15 runs, the Rays could only send two men across home plate. One of the two runs was driven in by Mr. March 2009, Jon Weber. Dewon Day had two scoreless innings and Rule 5 pick, Derek Rodriguez worked a perfect eight inning.