Simple mission succeeds

RAYS 5, MARINERS 1: Lou Piniella gives his team a talk before one of its best efforts this year, led by a rookie shortstop and solid pitching.

ST. PETERSBURG - So many good things happened for the Devils Rays during Sunday's 5-1 victory over the Mariners, it's tough to know where to start.

Shortstop B.J. Upton played after sitting for two games, got two hits and drove in the winning run with his first major-league RBI.

Starter Rob Bell got the win with seven solid innings in which he allowed six hits, struck out six and walked one.

Every starter had a hit. Carl Crawford, Julio Lugo, Aubrey Huff, Tino Martinez and Rey Sanchez also had two, and the Rays got 15, their first double-digit output since July 28.

But in explaining the game that ended an 8-5 homestand at Tropicana Field, it is best to start with a pregame meeting in which the players said manager Lou Piniella spoke and they listened.

The message?

"Just basically to look into ourselves and be able to look each other in the mirror and say that we're bringing what we have to every day to the park," Bell said. "He just wants us to relax and do the things we're capable of doing since we were young. It wasn't a hellfire and damnation thing by any means."

No one else spoke.

"I don't know," Piniella said when asked if he believed the meeting had an effect. "I just wanted to talk about some things. That was the reason for the meeting. It wasn't because of our record. I had some other things I wanted to talk about."

Catcher Brook Fordyce said it was a good way to emphasize the positive.

The team has taken media criticism lately for a serious lack of offense. And even with Friday's controversial victory over Seattle, the Rays were 2-4 in six games entering Sunday.

"We had a good homestand," Fordyce said. "You keep reading about the offense and this and that. You don't want to emphasize the negative. It's just like we keep hearing offense. We win but the other day it was by an interference call. The bats are still cold. You don't want that to set in for longer than it has to be."

Of course, the best way to change your mojo is to win, and the Rays evened the four-game series in style.

Bell and Fordyce worked beautifully together, and Bell said a key was effectively throwing his breaking ball when even or behind in the count.

He came up big in the third inning when, with runners at first and third with one out, he got Bret Boone, who is on a 13-game hitting streak, to line out to Upton at short and struck out Bucky Jacobsen. Reliever Jesus Colome pitched 12/3 scoreless innings and Danys Baez got the final out for his 24th save and 13th straight.

It was superb work by a pitching staff that had what Piniella called a "phenomenal" 2.33 ERA during the homestand and allowed just 97 hits in 120 innings.

Then there were the bats. Okay, so only one of Sunday's hits, Lugo's fifth-inning double, was for extra bases. But when a team has just two games with double-digit hits in their previous 18 while batting .221, 15 hits seems like an avalanche.

And you can't be unhappy with run-scoring singles from Lugo, Upton and Sanchez that came with two outs.

"You're just trying to do your own part and temper your own emotions and let those guys burst out of their cage a little bit," Bell said.

Piniella could not have said it better.