Starting pitchers have to take most of the blame for Tampa Rays woes

For a professional sports franchise, being less than mediocre can be a catastrophe.

It can lead to embarrassing questions that are met with embarrassing answers.

No GM wants to feel like he is Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton when facing the media.

Nixon’s favorite line: “I am not a crook,” lives in infamy. When his team is faltering and draft picks and trades are turning into duds, what GM doesn’t want to scream: “I am not dumb.”

So what has happened to the Tampa Bay Rays?

It looks as if they tried to make some radical changes to their approach to winning games and it backfired.

But on the flip side, the starting pitching, which is the backbone of this organization, has failed.

This is an organization that annually gets more out of a buck than any team in Major League Baseball.

But not this year. Not so far.

Going into Saturday’s game against the once-floundering Yankees, the Rays had lost six of their last seven and three straight to fall four games under .500, matching their lowest point of the season.

The Rays are averaging an American League low 3.13 runs per game at home compared with 5.18 on the road, which was the second-highest in the AL heading into Saturday.

Their 41 homers are a club record for May and three short of the franchise record for any month (44 in September 2012).

Conspiracy theorists alert: This might be the best argument the Rays can present to get a new stadium.

This is not the Rays team we grew to admire, the one built on pitching and defense.

The Rays made seven errors in the four games (including three multi-error games) leading into Saturday after committing two errors in their previous 11 games.

“We’re not the type of club that’s going to overcome a bunch of defensive miscues,” Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash said. “We saw that show up in the Marlins series. We saw that show up a little bit (Friday).”

What hasn’t shown up is the starting pitching.

Remember how this season was supposed to go: The starters on what some called the best rotation in baseball were supposed to provide seven quality innings per outing.

From May 1 through Thursday, Tampa had two starts of seven innings or more.

Both were from Matt Andriese, a recent call-up who was supposed to be a spot starter.

In that span, the Rays have 17 starts of five innings or fewer.

Chris Archer, Jake Odorizzi, Drew Smyly and Matt Moore have a combined eight victories in 40 starts while Andriese has three wins in four starts.

Alex Colome has done his part with 12 saves in 12 opportunities and a 1.26 ERA.

But a lack of setup men and faltering starters have forced the Rays to go to the bullpen earlier then they want, which has had a debilitating effect on the overall effectiveness of the relievers.

Brad Boxberger is due back soon, which should help, but it still comes down to the starting rotation dong a better job.

Lack of hitting has made things even more precarious.

The Rays lineup often has had five hitters batting under .200.

Against the Yankees Friday night there were two players hitting a sub .200 and two others hitting at the .200.

It makes the loss of center fielder Kevin Kiermaier with a broken hand even more devastating.

When a team or player starts making adjustments on top of adjustments you have to wonder if the foundation gets lost, which might be happening with Corey Dickerson.

The former Colorado Rockies outfielder was a risky acquisition because Coors Field makes a lot of hitters look like Superman.

Now they are just hoping he will be human.

This club, which used to take pride in making contact, entered Saturday second in the AL with 433 strikeouts.

They were last in hits, and fifth from last in the AL in RBIs and runs scored.

It will would help if the front office had hit for a higher batting average.

This story was originally published May 28, 2016 at 11:27 PM with the headline "Starting pitchers have to take most of the blame for Tampa Rays woes."