Garza's finale another downer

Matt Garza understands there are plenty of things he did right this season, but the final chapter felt just as wrong as everything that had come before it in 2009.

Denied the reassurance of one last victory heading into the offseason, Garza was instead left to stew one last time following a game that easily could have gone his way but inevitably slipped away.

So to the Orioles, their 3-2 victory Thursday night represented the end of a 13-game losing skid that had gnawed at them for two weeks. And to Garza, it was one last log on the fire that will probably burn for the next four months.

Just about any way you slice the numbers he put up, his season was an impressive one. He held opponents to a .233 batting average, a franchise record, and in smothering lefties at a .196 clip he has been stingier against them than any right-handed starter in the majors.

He crossed the 200-inning plateau for the first time, finishing at 203, and his 189 strikeouts this season are the second-most in Rays history behind Scott Kazmir's 239 whiffs in 2007. His 19 quality starts - including Thursday's - led the team.

You can stack those statistics and others as high as you like, but all Garza can see as he looks back at this year is his final record - 8-12.

"It's bittersweet," he said. "You pitch to win, and this year I didn't do that job. So I'm just going to pack it up, take it home and take a couple months off and just get away from baseball for a while."

It may take a while for that frustration to bleed away, and the way Thursday's game unfolded didn't help.

Garza entered the game as the worst-supported starter in the league, with the Rays averaging 3.75 runs per nine innings in his appearances. So watching his teammates manage only one run and a pair of hits against Chris Waters and the Orioles' bullpen through the first eight innings was nothing new.

Waters, a Lakeland native and Lake Gibson High graduate, was quite effective pitching so close to home. Ben Zobrist's 27th homer, a solo shot to left in the fourth, represented the only damage the Rays managed against Waters in his five innings.

The Rays finally mounted a real rally against closer Jim Johnson in the ninth, scoring once and putting the winning run on base. But Akinori Iwamura grounded back to Johnson with the tying run on third to end it and hand that final loss to Garza.

Manager Joe Maddon said he believes Garza has pitched significantly better than his record and called it a shame he'll be judged more on 8-12 than everything else he did.

But that's just the way it goes sometimes, even if a rock-solid explanation for why it happened remains elusive.

"It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense," Zobrist said. "He's pitched really well for us and been very solid, and we just weren't able to get him those wins."