Irony, Thy Name is Devil Ray

Well, my overwhelming impression of the Tampa Bay series was, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson...meh. No wait...strike that...snuh. Pick any psedo-sensical word you want, the fact is that it was a very blase series for the Twinks, and today's off day seems welcome, if not for the players then for the collective psyche of the fanbase. The series was so blase, in fact, that it caused us here at TWT to do a bit of an overhaul -- call it spring cleaning if you will -- nothing drastic. Any future aesthetic suggestions can be placed in our comment box, as usual (the one marked "Queer Eye for the Webmaster Guy".

The irony of the last four games was that the two losses came on the backs of arguably the two most stable guys on the team -- Santana and Nathan.

What does this say to us overly analytical types? Well, nothing really. Coincidence is the best answer in my guestimation. Those guys are going to have their radar screen blips, and they just happened to come against a blipping crappy-ass team like the D-Rays. At home. With them running the bases as if for the first time. It's tough to sort through what is "young" behavior and what is just good old fashioned inferior genetics when it comes to athletics, so I have a problem automatically drinking the media Kool-aid about the ups and downs of a baseball team undergoing a youth movement like the Rays. We hear all about them being "talented but young" early last week, but I'm not sure that's what we saw so much as a slight choke job by our squad. It might turn out that this group of young Rays is just bad. Nathan, frankly, got bailed out earlier by Crawford's unbelievable base-running gaff. In fact, it was so bad, I'm not sure gaff is a good enough description. It was a flat out flurge. I just made that word up. The fact is that even when you're not playing at peak form as a team, you gotta step up in close games and win them, no matter who you're playing.

Still, my optimism is not entirely crushed. It's going to take a whole lot more Mauer groundouts to second (teeing one up for Hops) and Punto hissy fits to do that. And I know Nathan and Santana are going to be fine. Ponson's control has me somewhat worried, but not as much as his decision in hair stylists. Ortiz just can't be this good the whole season, but if he's anywhere even close, I'll take it. Boof and Silva I don't have the energy to discuss. If there is a silver lining it's the fact that there are many division games still to come, and maybe we can get in some kind of groove by then.