But then you remember the mere existence of the New York Yankees, who will never be an easy out. And, if you needed a reminder as to what can keep the Tampa Bay Rays relevant, James Shields provided it in the series opener against Boston.
The Rays have enough starting pitching to remain competitive, and if Shields does more of what he did Tuesday against the surging Red Sox offense, they could be more than just competitive.
Shields yielded five hits, three to Adrian Gonzalez, in a complete-game shutout — his third of the year and the fifth of his career. It ended Boston’s nine-game winning streak and pulled Tampa Bay, which has won 21 of the last 29 games at home against their AL East rivals, to within 3 1/2 games of first place.
The Red Sox got a pretty solid pitching performance of their own from Tim Wakefield, who allowed one earned run in seven innings, but he was a footnote in Shield’s 4-0 victory.
“The unfortunate part was that Shields was about as good as he could be,” Boston manager Terry Francona said. “He kind of overwhelmed us tonight.”
It is one thing for a guy like Shields to have an overwhelming performance. It is another entirely to do so against the Red Sox, who scored 30 runs in their previous two games and entered the night with 20 more runs than anyone else in the AL.
They also started the game leading all of baseball in hitting, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, hits, doubles, total bases, extra-base hits and RBIs.
Almost none of that materialized against Shields.
The 29-year-old had to escape a bases-loaded jam in the top of the first inning. He walked two and gave up the first of three singles to Gonzalez in the frame, throwing 23 pitches before getting back to the dugout.
Shields needed only 46 pitches, or twice that total, to get through the next five innings. Overall, he struck out five, walked three, did not allow a runner to reach third base and lowered his ERA to 2.60. His changeup was outstanding.
The Rays scored their four runs on a 320-foot home run down the line in left, a passed ball with a man on third and a pair of bloop RBI singles. They didn’t knock the ball all over the park, but they didn’t have to.
“We were fortunate today [to score four runs],” said Tampa Bay third baseman Evan Longoria. “Obviously, Shields took care of the rest…That’s not easy to do against that lineup. We watched them do a pretty good job in Toronto. They scored a lot of runs in that series. For him to do what he did was pretty impressive.”
When the Rays traded away Matt Garza this offseason, the prevailing thought was that the rotation would suffer a bit, especially with Shields coming off his worst season. However, within his soaring ERA and 13-15 record last year were many indications of misfortune. Tampa Bay had confidence that Shields would bounce back. Now that he has, the absence of Garza is less of an issue.
The back end of the Tampa Bay rotation remains muddled. After No. 4 starter Wade Davis, who has struggled of late, a collection of arms have filled in for the injured and ineffective Jeff Niemann. But with Shields, youngster Jeremy Hellickson and ace David Price, the staff has enough to match up from time to time with the big dogs of the division.
The Red Sox are learning that firsthand.
After Shields comes Hellickson, who is 6-2 with a 2.28 ERA over his last eight starts, and then Price. The runner up in the 2010 Cy Young Award voting is 4-2 with a 3.20 mark over his last eight outings, and has always enjoyed facing Boston.
It may have seemed, during their nine-game winning streak, as if the Red Sox had a stranglehold on the division. They were so dominant during the run that it was hard to envision anybody sticking with them.
James Shields delivered a dose of reality.
