Rays Tank: Let's just talk about Durham's no-hitter

Maddon and the Rays seem to have put yesterday's debacle behind them.

We made more mistakes in the sixth inning today than we had all season. This is definitely one to utilize the trash can and move on.

— Joe Maddon (@RaysJoeMaddon) April 27, 2014

Frustrating to say the least but just gotta get better!! Make pitches..stay focused...see ya in 5 days

— David Price (@DAVIDprice14) April 27, 2014

That doesn't mean you need to. Check hatfied's recap, and complain your heart out.

Or, if jaunty music works for you better than catharsis, play on loop this video of Mike Montgomery and Brad Boxburger combining to throw a no-hitter for Durham.

The good news is that the Rays are only four games back in the AL East and it's early. The bad news is that they don't seem very good at winning baseball games right now.

Jason Hanselman has a piece up at Dock of the Rays now with some truly fantastic graphs of how each Rays hitter has performed so far compared to what our expectations for them should have been.

The Process Report has been hard at work with Tommy Rancel highlighting Cesar Ramos's work as a starter, and Jason Collette examining Jake Odorizzi's struggles the second time through the lineup. Very nice heat-maps in there.

Other Links

Two good, recent things at The Hardball Times: Matt Hunter talks about what he learned from tying to make a baseball simulation (good light read), and Max Weinsitein dives into finding platoon players (mathy).

At Beyond the Box Score, Chris Teeter checks out whether being able to throw many different types of pitches significantly influences pitcher pace. Doesn't seem like it, but as an aside, Erik Bedard is very slow.