Friday, June 27, 2008

Garza gearing up for July

The back end of the Tampa Bay rotation is in constant flux. Seemingly all at once Rays starters Edwin Jackson, Andy Sonnanstine and Matt Garza dominate and disappoint. It's rare for any of them to have three consecutive starts that are either all good or all bad.

Take, for instance, Garza's Thursday. He threw a one-hitter against Florida in which the only hit was a Hanley Ramirez home run. Other than that he was nearly flawless, and although he's had a tendency to hit major highs and lows, Garza did become the first of these three Tampa tossers to string together back-to-back-to-back quality starts since Sonnanstine did so in late April.

Garza is the hot one in the bunch, and now is a good time to stay strong. We're just over a month from the trade deadline, and Double-A prospect David Price is on the fast track to the Majors. In his first Double-A start tonight, Price struggled a bit but still delivered a quality start. Two more of those and, well, he'll have a longer string of success than Jackson has all season. He'll have a better three-game stretch than Sonnanstine's experienced in two months.

1 comment:

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