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Rays Have Just Enough To End Road Skid

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By MARC LANCASTER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 26, 2008

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A game that began with Edwin Jackson flashing no-hit stuff required some high-wire work by the bullpen at the end, but the Rays' relief corps managed to hang on.

Even after allowing a home run in the bottom of the ninth Friday night, Troy Percival picked up his second save since returning from the disabled list last weekend by preserving a lead challenged by the Royals from the sixth inning on to give the Rays a 5-3 victory.

Tampa Bay's first win away from Tropicana Field since June 29 at Pittsburgh and Boston's loss against the Yankees pushed the Rays back to a full game ahead of the Red Sox in the standings.

"It's so nice to get a road victory," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "If we want to get to the promised land, we've got to win on the road. We can't let games get away and tonight the pitching pretty much got it done."

And despite a late homer by Carlos Pena that provided some desperately needed breathing room, it also reaffirmed the notion that the Rays will go as far as their pitching will take them this season.

For a while there, it looked like Jackson was on his way to something special. The right-hander stifled the Royals lineup through the first four innings, using double plays to keep his number of batters faced at the minimum after he walked Alex Gordon in the second and hit David DeJesus with a pitch in the fourth.

"It was nothing exceptional," Jackson said of how he felt Friday. "I was just trying to be aggressive and I had some good defensive plays made behind me and I was just trying to keep the pace going."

Jackson didn't give up a hit until Billy Butler loaded up on a 1-0 pitch with two out in the fifth and drove it a mile onto the grass beyond the center-field fence. Jackson didn't let it become a rally, dispensing with Ross Gload to end the inning, but he gave back the run the Rays collected in the top of the sixth by allowing a leadoff homer to John Buck in the bottom half.

A subsequent walk to ninth-place hitter Mitch Maier was sufficiently troubling to Maddon that he decided to pull the plug right there, going to Grant Balfour even though Jackson had thrown just 74 pitches.'

Maddon said the move wasn't a reflection on Jackson as much as it was a desire to get the Rays most effective reliever of late into the kind of situation in which he has thrived. Still, seeing his manager come out of the dugout that early caught Jackson off-guard.

"I was surprised, but that's just one of those things," said Jackson. "Like I say all the time, you can't worry about what you can't control. He's the manager and my job is to do what I'm asked to do. He felt that I needed to come out of the game, so who am I to question it, you know?"

It helped that Balfour validated the decision with a big assist from Evan Longoria. The third baseman went to the dirt to pick off a liner from DeJesus that was headed for the left-field corner and extra bases, then Balfour struck out Mike Aviles and Mark Grudzielanek.

Balfour and J.P. Howell did make things a little more interesting in the seventh, as Balfour walked Gordon before turning it over to the lefty with two outs and a man on first. A single by Gload, a wild pitch and a four-pitch walk to Buck left Howell with a bases-loaded mess, but the former Royal got pinch-hitter Esteban German to ground into an inning-ending force play.

Dan Wheeler also had to work a little magic after inheriting a runner from Howell in the eighth and Percival gave up a two-out homer to Gload in the ninth, but Pena's long ball rendered that a mere annoyance.

"The bullpen was fabulous," said Maddon. "They were fabulous."

The same could not be said about the Rays' offense, as some welcome signs of life were tempered by more squandered opportunities. A night after Tampa Bay let Gil Meche off the hook by failing to push across runs early in the game, the Rays were unable to maximize their chances against Brian Bannister and the Royals' bullpen.

There was some reason to take heart in a two-out RBI single by Longoria in the first inning and B.J. Upton's sacrifice fly in the sixth, but the Rays could have had much more. They stranded two runners in the second, fourth, fifth and sixth innings, with just about everyone in the batting order leaving someone idling in scoring position at one juncture or another.

And they were fortunate to get the run they got in the fifth, which resulted almost entirely from some bungled defense on Kansas City's part.

First, Upton was able to hustle up to third after a leadoff double when Grudzielanek tried to get cute after catching a liner by Carl Crawford. The veteran second baseman flipped the ball carelessly back toward the bag in an effort to double off Upton, who already was back at the base, and it trickled far enough away from Aviles that Upton was able to scoot to third.

He would come in to score when Pena lined one back up the middle against a shift that had Aviles playing almost directly behind second base. The ball hit the shortstop in the glove but he couldn't hold on and was charged with an error, resulting in an unearned run.

"We still need to continue to work on getting better with runners in scoring position," Maddon said. "But I thought there was a lot of intensity with our at-bats and it's going to happen."

A few more timely hits like the one Pena turned in wouldn't hurt. The first baseman made Leo Nunez pay for a two-out walk to Longoria by just clearing the distant fence in right with a 398-foot drive.

"Believe me, I know that a little breathing room is huge for our bullpen," said Pena. "I was glad I was able to put a bat on that ball."

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

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