Rays batters once again racking up Ks

It's no secret that Joe Maddon would like to see his hitters strike out less often. After all, just putting the ball in play gives a hitter a chance to make something happen on a blooper or an error.

But he knows there is only so much he can do with the hitters that populate his batting order on a nightly basis. As a group, they do a decent job of drawing walks, but they inevitably are going to rack up a ton of whiffs.

The Rays have five players in their regular lineup who struck out at least 120 times last season - Carlos Pena (166), Pat Burrell (136), B.J. Upton (134), Akinori Iwamura (131) and Evan Longoria (122) - and there's little reason to expect a significant reduction in those totals in 2009.

"It is part of our makeup, it's a part of our culture," Maddon said. "I'd just like to see us do a better job of cutting down in different situations. I believe strikeouts are OK with nobody on and two outs; I'm OK with a strikeout then. Runners at third base with less than two outs, that's when the strikeout becomes a little bit more annoying.

"And those are the moments where I would like to see us make some kind of a mental adjustment that permits us to put the ball in play more consistently."

Entering Friday's games, the Rays' 133 strikeouts were one off the major-league high held by Texas. Thirty-three of the Rays' strikeouts had come with men in scoring position, second in the AL to Cleveland. But those Ks haven't been as costly to the Indians and Rangers; they ranked second and third in the AL in runs, respectively.

Zobrist left out

Ben Zobrist is hitting .400 and boasts a .500 on-base percentage in his last five games, but he was on the bench Friday as Gabe Gross (.130 batting average) got the start in right field.

Maddon said he liked Gross' swing against A's starter Trevor Cahill, but the fact that Oakland has lefties on the mound the next two days also was a factor.

In addition to Gross, Maddon said he planned to get the rest of the Rays' seldom-used position players into the lineup this weekend. C Michel Hernandez is slated to start today, and Maddon said he probably will give Iwamura and Pena Sunday off, opening up a spot to start Willy Aybar.

Blacked out

Today's game is one of only four Rays contests this season that is currently slated not to be televised. Because the game starts at 4 p.m. on a Saturday, it falls within Fox's exclusive national broadcast window and thus can't be televised by any other entity.

The other non-TV games at the moment are June 13, July 11 and Aug. 1, all of which are Saturday night home games that start at 6:08 p.m. because of the Rays' concert series.

No reservations

Maddon needed a place to take his wife, Jaye, for a nice birthday dinner in San Francisco this weekend, so he went straight to the source.

He had lunch Friday with an old friend from his days in Salinas, Calif., in the late 1970s, Ward Bushee, who is now the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.

When Maddon mentioned he was trying to find "a really cool place with a nice atmosphere," Bushee pulled out his phone and called the paper's food critic, who recommended a chic spot called The Waterbar.

Farm facts

RHP Jason Isringhausen threw a scoreless inning of relief for Montgomery for the second consecutive day Friday, walking one and striking out one against Mobile. He is slated for one more appearance for the Biscuits before moving up to Durham. ... LHP James Houser made his first career Triple-A start Friday, allowing four runs in four innings for Durham against Norfolk. Most of his trouble came early, on back-to-back homers in the first.

Marc Lancaster