Shields' struggles continue in loss to Rangers

Heading into this season, there was no reason to expect James Shields to regress.

In his first two full seasons in the majors, Shields had bumped up his win total, taken his ERA down a third of a run, and logged an extra 25 innings thanks to the Rays' postseason run. His strikeout rate was down from 2007 to 2008, but despite that there were no indications that Shields wouldn't do what he had been doing once again in 2009.

From just about the very start, though, this hasn't been Shields' year. And the defeat he incurred Friday when the Rays fell 8-3 to the Rangers ensured Tampa Bay's Opening Day starter will finish this season with a losing record.

"I'm not too happy with that," Shields said. "I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to that, and it's disappointing to know that I'm not going to have a winning record this year."

In dropping to 10-12 with what should be one start remaining, Wednesday against Baltimore, Shields had another frustrating evening of the type he has experienced far too often in 2009. Allowing five runs in seven innings, Shields certainly wasn't flawless. He has had several starts like this on the way to accumulating a 4.17 ERA and allowing a major league-high 233 hits.

And while he could fairly blame a lack of runs to back him on many nights, as he entered the evening with the sixth-worst support in the AL, in games like this the ultimate responsibility fell to him.

"There was a time when we weren't really scoring any runs for him and we were hanging some losses on him, then we got a little bit better and his pitching maybe wasn't as sharp also," Manager Joe Maddon said. "It's just been a back-and-forth thing."

A 30-pitch first inning didn't bode well for Shields, and the 2-0 deficit that resulted from that arduous opening frame followed up by Chris Davis' solo homer in the second immediately put the Rays in a hole Friday.

They were able to respond, though, with their bats coming alive in the third as they squeezed 35 pitches out of Rangers rookie lefty Derek Holland. Gabe Kapler started the inning off with a homer, and the Rays scored twice more on consecutive two-out singles by Evan Longoria and Ben Zobrist to tie the game at 3.

But the Rangers scratched out a run in the fourth and fifth - one scoring on a double play and the other on a grounder to Willy Aybar, who botched an attempt to cut down Julio Borbon at the plate. After escaping the fifth with a line-drive double play to keep it at 5-3, Shields went six-up, six-down to get through seven.

All he could do then was hope for a rally that didn't come, a failure punctuated by the three-run homer Grant Balfour allowed in the eighth to Ian Kinsler for the final margin.

In 32 starts this season, Shields has departed a game with the Rays trailing by more than three runs only four times. Most of his eight remaining losses bore some similarity to this one, with the breaks not going his way.

"It's been a frustrating year for me," Shields said. "You tell yourself to move on, and that's what I've got to do. Hopefully I can end my last game on a good note going into next year and hopefully things will change next year."