Zambrano shows his bad side

ORIOLES 9, RAYS 5: Starter is at his wildest, putting Tampa Bay in hole it can't overcome.

BALTIMORE - Victor Zambrano has had something of a schizophrenic season, leading the American League in walks, hit batters and wild pitches while leading the Devil Rays in victories.

So it only figures, though it's tough to figure out, that he followed one of his best outings of the season, eight shutout innings Friday in Cleveland, with one of his worst Wednesday as the Rays lost to Baltimore 9-5.

Zambrano matched his season high by allowing eight runs (six earned) while lasting a season-low 32/3 innings. He walked six (four of whom scored) while giving up four hits, including two home runs, and hit a batter. He missed the strike zone with 43 of his 87 pitches.

"When he's good, he's good," Rays manager Lou Piniella said. "And when he's not good ...

"He struggled tonight. Almost from the first inning on with his command. It wasn't good."

Zambrano, who is 9-7 with a 4.27 ERA, said there was nothing wrong and not much different. "When you don't have good location it's tough to use all of your pitches," he said. "I tried to do the best I can."

In 1431/3 innings, Zambrano has walked 87 (5.5 per nine innings), allowed 17 home runs, hit 16 and thrown 15 wild pitches.

Zambrano put the Rays in a huge hole, 8-0 in the fourth, but they made a game effort to make a game of it. If shortstop Julio Lugo hadn't made a couple of careless errors that led to three unearned runs, they would have.

Lugo, who has 15 errors in 81 games, was too casual on a routine throw to second for what should have been the final out of the fourth, allowing two runs to make it 8-0. He then booted a routine ground ball in the eighth, leading to Baltimore's final run.

"We try," Lugo said. "You can see the hustle of the team. You see the heart. We never gave up. Unfortunately I made some errors at the wrong time and those errors cost us three runs. They were aggressive errors. The second one was. The first one was stupid."

"The one that really hurt was the throw into the rightfield corner," Piniella said. "If we'd have kept it at six we could have run and forced the issue a little more."

The Rays scored two in the fifth on back-to-back homers by Jared Sandberg, his third in five games, and Marlon Anderson, his first since June 24. They scored one in the sixth on consecutive doubles by Toby Hall, who had three hits, and Sandberg. They scored two in the seventh on a fielder's choice grounder by Damian Rolls and a single by Hall to cut the score to 8-5.

As good as it felt to come back, they were more frustrated by not getting more, leaving 10 on base, as the Orioles snapped an eight-game losing streak. Six consecutive innings ended with men on base.

Lugo hit into a force play with two on to end the third. Rolls popped out with a man on to end the fourth. Aubrey Huff grounded out weakly to second with two on to end the fifth. Carl Crawford, who earlier stole his 41st base, struck out with two on to end the sixth. Sandberg grounded into a forceout with two on to end the seventh. Rocco Baldelli struck out with one on to end the eighth.

"We fought to get back in the game," Piniella said. "But we left a lot of people on. Our defense wasn't good tonight. And Zambrano really didn't give us much of a chance at all."