Rays rip Red Sox apart

There's a long way to go until October, but the Tampa Bay Rays clearly think they're ready to play with the big boys in the American League East right now.
Tampa's sweep of the defending world champion Boston Red Sox this week was no fluke, a combination of decent starting pitching (by James Shields on Monday), clutch hitting (by seemingly the entire lineup) and solid work from the bullpen (by Grant Balfour, Dan Wheeler and J.P. Howell). The Rays now stand atop the division, comfortably in front of the Red Sox and the New York Yankees, and are showing no signs of fear heading into the season's second half. The questions now are obvious ones -- can Tampa sustain this throughout the rest of the season? Are the Red Sox and Yankees finished?
Let's go one at a time, starting with Boston. The Red Sox bullpen was terrible in this series. Manny Delcarmen and Craig Hansen were the chief goats, reverting to the form that earned them banishment to the minors last season. Their offense, still without David Ortiz, wasn't as bad as it could have been -- Boston did score enough runs in each of the last two games to win. Dustin Pedroia is on fire, J.D. Drew is coming off his best month as a professional in June and Kevin Youkilis is hitting the ball well. The Red Sox starting pitching was okay, with a strong outing by Tim Wakefield and a decent one by Daisuke Matsuzaka. Josh Beckett didn't pitch in the series, and he would have been a good bet to salvage the third game given his record in must-win outings.
The Yankees are a little more questionable. A rotation that runs out Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson every five days has to be considered suspect. Chien-Ming Wang is out until at least September, and Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy have been disasters when healthy -- the Yankees might not even want them back at this point. Yes, New York scored 18 runs against Texas on Wednesday, but offenses go into slumps far more often than pitching and defense do. And don't underestimate the impact that Alex Rodriguez's off-field situation will have on his performance. Rodriguez is the game's most fragile superstar, and the impending break-up of his marriage will play itself out on the gossip pages of the New York papers for the rest of the summer. The fact that he appears to be pursuing Madonna and taking on Jose Canseco's sloppy seconds is even more tasty for the tabloids.
The only way that Tampa can keep its nose in front is with continued excellence from its starting pitchers, something that is unlikely given their age and inexperience. All five of the Rays' primary starters are 26 or younger, and only Scott Kazmir has the pedigree that would suggest he can last through the dog days of summer and into the early fall. Kazmir is one of the best pitchers in all of baseball, backing up his 239 strikeouts last season with a 7-3 start this year. His 2.63 ERA and 1.13 WHIP will have him in the Cy Young conversation yet again and the lefthander will continue to dominate hitters with his array of filth.
As for the other four men who take the ball every fifth day, they're soon going to find themselves in very unfamiliar territory. James Shields threw 215 innings last year, his first full season as a starter, and is at 109.1 this season. His high in the minor leagues was 144 in 2003 at Class-A Bakersfield. Edwin Jackson racked up 161.0 innings last season, his first year as a starter since throwing 148 at Double-A Jacksonville in 2003. Jackson was in the Los Angeles Dodgers' organization then and came to the big leagues as a reliever before the Rays converted him back to a starter last season. Andy Sonnanstine is at 101.2 innings this year, almost equal to his total of 130.2 last year during his rookie season. Sonnanstine's previous professional best was the 186 innings he threw at Double-A Montgomery in 2006. Then we have Matt Garza, who is already 7.2 innings over his previous professional high of 83. Garza set that mark last year with Minnesota and threw a grand total of 306.1 innings in three minor league seasons of work.
Developing reliable starting pitching is difficult for every organization. Tampa's crop of young arms is as talented as there is in baseball, a product of a couple of good trades and high draft picks gained by being a bad baseball team for so many years. The Rays still have David Price, a former No. 1 overall pick, waiting in the wings should they need him. Still, the learning curve for young pitchers in the majors is a steep one. Add in the pressure of a pennant race and it will be too much to take for Tampa. Consider that Jackson has allowed less than three runs in just one of his last seven starts and Sonnanstine has given up six or more hits in all but two of his 17 starts this season. That puts even more weight on the shoulders of Kazmir, Shields and Garza to keep pitching at an extremely high level. I doubt that they can do it against the deep lineups that the rest of the American League has to offer. The Rays have been impressive so far, but they're not ready to sting the rest of the AL East just yet.