SportsDystopia

In spite of the impressive way that Tampa Bay had taken control of their series against the Boston Red Sox with an 11th inning win in marathon game 2 and a thoroughly dominating performance in game 3, you could see that the media coverage prior to Tuesday night’s game 4 wasn’t ready to jump on the bandwagon just yet.

Oh sure, the Rays owned Tim Wakefield all season, but the 42 year-old has been in this situation about a hundred times.  Yeah, his opponent on the mound, Andy Sonnanstine, hasn’t been rattled by pressure at all this season or against the White Sox in the clinching game of the Division Series, but he’s never been on this big a stage before, not facing the Boston juggernaut at Fenway in the ALCS.

For all the lip-service given to the young Rays in the last 24 hours, there was a palpable lack of respect behind it.  Well, your game 4 score was 13-4 Rays.  Respect must now be paid.  And the bandwagon just got alot more crowded.

Tampa Bay’s dominance was almost a replay of their 9-1 win in game 3, except on Tuesday they jumped on Wakefield in the 1st inning.  On Monday, it had taken until the 3rd to get the better of Jon Lester.  If Wakefield’s knuckleball had danced, the stories in the morning would’ve called him “ageless”.  Now, they’ll probably just call him “aged” or “aging”, after he allowed 3 home runs in his mere 2 and 2/3 innings.  For the 2nd night in  a row, the game was finished in the early frames.

Meanwhile, the man on the mound for Tampa might finally get some of the respect he’s due.  Sonnanstine has quietly been one of the best young pitchers in baseball this season, going 13-9 on the year.   The Sabermetricians yawned at him and his low number of strikeouts (124 in 193 innings), and his un-gaudy ERA and batting average allowed (4.38, .277).  The fantasy players waited for him to lose his spot in the rotation whenever the Rays called up young stud David Price.

Both seemed to ignore that Sonnanstine did the thing that’s most important for a pitcher, win games.  His total of 13 was the 2nd highest on the team this year, behind only James Shields.  And he never walks people.  He has issued only 63 free passes in 324 regular season innings.  In 54 career starts, he’s walked more than 2 batters exactly 3 times.  In all 3 of those instances, more than 2 has equaled 3.  In other words, in a league full of young pitchers who struggle with control, control is NEVER a problem for Sonnanstine.

And he was just as dominant in game 4 of this series as he was in game 4 against the AL’s other Sox.  In 7 innings, he had given up only 2 hits and 4 runs, but with a 13-2 lead, manager Joe Maddon allowed him to start the 8th inning to rest the Rays bullpen.  Sonnanstine would allow 2 hits, and get charged with 2 more runs (only 1 of them earned).

His final line read a nice 7 1/3 IP, 6 hits, 3 ER, 4 R, 2 K’s and 1 BB, but more importantly, he had gotten the one stat that means anything to him: the Win.

And with that win, the Rays have taken one more step towards a World Series appearance nobody would have predicted at the season’s outset.  Perhaps they’ve also finally taken a step towards the respect that has been too slow in coming.

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