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Kazmir Gets Back On Track As Rays blank A's, 4-0

Tribune photo by Kelvin Ma

Rookie third baseman Evan Longoria was 2-for-5 with a home run, his 19th of the season.

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By MARC LANCASTER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 22, 2008

Updated:

ST. PETERSBURG - As Scott Kazmir's frustration mounted with each start he made heading into the All-Star break, Rays manager Joe Maddon kept coming back to one point.

Of course his ace hadn't been himself, Maddon said, but one of those patented runs of dominance seemed to be lurking just below the surface for the lefty. Once he got locked in as he was shortly after coming off the disabled list in May, or for most of the second half last season, he could really get on a roll.

Will Monday's outing be the one that propels Kazmir to just such a run? We'll see. But he was far more effective in his first post-break start than at any point in the previous six weeks. Kazmir limited an Oakland offense that admittedly isn't the stiffest test the league has to offer to two hits and struck out nine in a 4-0 Rays victory.

Those numbers were nice, but one stat stood above the rest for Kazmir.

"Seven innings," he said. "No question."

It was his longest outing since he went a season-high eight innings June 6 at Texas and a welcome change from the run of pitch count-truncated five- and six-inning appearances he had logged at the end of the first half. He got there with better fastball command and a more effective slider than he has had most of the season.

Oakland entered the game with the lowest team batting average and highest strikeout total in the league, and Kazmir was able to exploit those deficiencies. He did walk four batters - all of them leading off an inning - but rather than letting those mistakes knock him off his game, he just took the ball and kept on going.

"I just think it's rhythm, tempo, feel, and once he really gains that, heads up," said Maddon. "It looked closer to what we saw in the last half of last season tonight."

Heartening as it was for the Rays to see Kazmir back on track, the work done by their hitters provided just as much encouragement. Two months to the day after Dana Eveland limited them to a run and three hits in a complete-game victory at Oakland, the Rays pieced together hits large and small for four runs Monday.

Best of all for a group that had been struggling as a whole, several players had a hand in pushing runs across.

Start with B.J. Upton, who has had as tough a time as anyone lately but unveiled a different approach Monday. He went the other way his first two times up, singling to right, and stole second each time - his 29th and 30th this year.

The second theft put Upton in scoring position with two outs and Evan Longoria drove him home, threading a single through the left side. Akinori Iwamura added a two-out RBI in the fourth with a well-placed grounder, going back up the middle to score Jonny Gomes after he had singled and swiped second.

Those two manufactured runs were complemented by a couple of prodigious longballs. Willy Aybar's towering fly to left in the fourth was his first homer since June 29, and Longoria's 396-foot drive leading off the fifth was the rookie's third homer in as many games.

The Rays squandered chances to break it open later, most notably when Longoria and Carlos Pena struck out with the bases loaded in the eighth, and they left 13 men on base. But the way they pitched, they didn't need to pile on.

Reporter Marc Lancaster can be reached at (813) 259-7227 or mlancaster@tampatrib.com.

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