Yesterday, the Rays finally snapped their losing streak at five games, by beating the Angels 7-1. Around the AL East race, the Red Sox beat Max Scherzer, but at least the Orioles lost.
Over at Rays Colored Glasses, Robbie Knopf takes a look at the history of winning teams who went on a bad stretchduring the late part of the season (the way the Rays just have). The comparison likely isn't all that predictive, which is good, since it's also not very rosy.
Around the AL East
One bit of news. Just as Roberto Hernandez has been converted to a reliever, Phil Hughes of the Yankees has also been moved to the bullpen. One fun bit from the article, David Huff takes a shot at Cleveland.
Other Links
From Shane Tourtellotte, do pitchers have a letdown game after throwing a no hitter?
From Russel Carleton (pay wall), do bad bullpens hurt the development of young pitchers?
And lastly, my favorite, from Dave Cameron, more an the recent outburst of context vs. no-context metrics. Why do reasonable people seem to like context-dependent metrics (like RE24), but disdain it for hitters? The comments are uneven, but worth reading as well. I think this is just about the hottest issue going right now, as there's a wave of sabermetric revisionism in the air right now.