Regular Season
The Devil Rays opened their 2007 season April 2, on the road against the defending division champion New York Yankees. The bullpen blew a lead and Tampa Bay lost, 9-5, but came back to win the third game, 7-6 (the second of the opening series was rained out). They suffered a setback in the middle of April when new third baseman Iwamura, off to a hot start with a .339 batting average to that point, suffered an oblique strain and went on the disabled list. However, the team continued to play better than in past years, and on May 4 moved into a tie for second place, the latest that Tampa Bay had been that high in the standings since the 1999 season.
The Rays trailed off going into May, falling eventually back into last place, but surged into their series in Orlando, Florida, against the Texas Rangers, which they swept. After the series with the Rangers, they won only one of the next seven games, skidding to a then season low, nine games below .500.
After a 9-4 win against the Dodgers to improve their record to 33-40 on June 24, the Devil Rays went on to lose 11 straight games and went on to lose 13 of 14 games since the Dodgers series and went into the All-Star Break 34-53. After the break it wasn't much better losing 3 games out of 4 against the Yankees in their 1st series after the break and went on to lose 8 straight games between July 21 to July 28. The low point of that Losing streak were two dismal losses to the Yankees. One game losing 17-5 and the other 21-4. The Rays' lack of pitching between their two aces and closer Al Reyes led to the coining of the idiom, "Kazmir and Shields, then off come the wheels."
For the Devil Rays it was a July to forget but things were getting better in August. Improvements made to the bullpen at the trade deadline led to shorter losing streaks and, eventually, more series wins. On August 11, Starting pitcher Edwin Jackson pitched the Devil Rays 1st complete game shutout of the year in a 3-0 win against the Rangers. On August 25, Pitcher Scott Kazmir went 8 innings with a career high 13 strikeouts in a 14-3 win against the Oakland Athletics and in that series the Rays took 3 of 4 games out scoring the A's 33 to 9 in the last three games of that series. The hot streak continued with a sweep of the tailspinning Baltimore Orioles and series wins at the Yankees and home against the Orioles and the Blue Jays before finally losing 2 of 3 at the Boston Red Sox and splitting a 4-game series at the Seattle Mariners.
Their September upswing ensured that they would finish the 2007 season with a better record than the 2006 season. They did, however, hobble into the end of the season, with Carl Crawford's season-ending groin pull in late-September contributing to a 5-13 finish. They did win their final game of the season, though, giving hope for next year.
Read more about this topic: 2007 Tampa Bay Devil Rays Season
Famous quotes containing the words regular and/or season:
““I couldn’t afford to learn it,” said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. “I only took the regular course.”
“What was that?” inquired Alice.
“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied; “and then the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
“I never heard of ‘Uglification,’” Alice ventured to say.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“When we reached the lake, about half past eight in the evening, it was still steadily raining, and harder than before; and, in that fresh, cool atmosphere, the hylodes were peeping and the toads ringing about the lake universally, as in the spring with us. It was as if the season had revolved backward two or three months, or I had arrived at the abode of perpetual spring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)