Rays find relief in winning homestand

© St. Petersburg Times
published July 2, 2002

A key to the Rays' successful homestand was the performance of the restocked and realigned bullpen, which hasn't allowed an earned run in its past 15 innings.

Manager Hal McRae is happy the relievers are doing better, though he is not sure why.

"I don't know what caused it, but they are pitching better," McRae said. "I know why they're pitching better from a physical aspect; they're throwing strikes.

"From a mental aspect, I don't know. Maybe it was the roster moves, maybe the shakeup, I don't know. All I do know is they're pitching with confidence and they're throwing strikes."

Certainly the addition of Travis Phelps and Jesus Colome, along with the subtraction of Victor Zambrano and Jason Jimenez, had something to do with it. So have the dependable contributions of Travis Harper.

"Everybody knows what they need to do: Keep the ball down and throw strikes," closer Esteban Yan said. "Everybody saw a lot of moves (last week), everyone's thinking they'll make some more next time, so maybe they're working harder. I don't know."

ZERO BALANCE: Tanyon Sturtze is preparing for tonight's start the same as any other this season.

But there is one big difference: the 1 in the victory column next to his name rather than the 0 that had been there for the first 121/2 weeks of the season.

"I don't feel so much under the microscope as before," Sturtze said. "I had that zero in that column for so long a lot of people looked at things a lot differently."

Even though 1-8 is not much different from 0-8, Sturtze's perspective has changed since he beat Toronto on June26.

"I don't feel I'm too far in the hole right now," Sturtze said. "I just want to follow it up with another good outing in Texas, hopefully pick up another win to get to two, then hopefully three before the All-Star break. Then I'd be back to almost normal, and anything and anything can happen.

"There's definitely some salvaging to do. I've got a lot of starts left and there's a whole other half to the season."

ALL-STAR TOTALS: Randy Winn was the obvious choice to be the Rays' All-Star, but he wasn't too popular with the fans casting paper and online ballots. Winn ranked 39th among the 41 AL outfielders, finishing with 105,459 votes.

Ben Grieve was the top vote-getter among the Rays, receiving 530,605 votes and finishing 10th among AL outfielders. The eight Rays on the ballot received a total of 1,496,534 votes, a little more than half as many as leading vote-getter Ichiro Suzuki (2,516,016).

Rays finished last at three positions: catcher, where Toby Hall got 83,722 votes; second base, where Brent Abernathy got 71,873; and shortstop, where Chris Gomez got 42,039, fewest of the 240 players on the ballots.

Third baseman Russ Johnson finished 13th with 112,473 votes (ahead of Detroit's Dean Palmer), first baseman Steve Cox finished 10th with 286,257 and outfielder Greg Vaughn finished 22nd with 264,106.

WELCOME BACK, PARDNER: The trip to Texas is a homecoming for several Rays, including Grieve, who starred at Arlington-Martin High; DH Aubrey Huff, who starred at Fort Worth-Brewer; and reliever Steve Kent, who played at Ellison High in Kileen.

MISCELLANY: Winn's 42 June hits were second in the majors to San Francisco's Jeff Kent, who had 46. Winn's 19 extra-base hits matched Seattle's John Olerud for the major-league high. ... Dave McCarty and Johnson are likely to be in the lineup tonight against Texas left-hander Kenny Rogers. ... Right-hander Brian Bulger, the Rays' 25th-round draft pick, signed. ... The Rays' .261 June batting average was their best of the season's first three months and their 5.17 ERA was their worst.