Longoria Leads Way As Rays Rout Trachsel

Rays 11, Orioles 4

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., May 24 -- During his unusual 14-day hiatus, 37-year-old veteran Steve Trachsel looked for ways to stay sharp. He threw extra bullpen sessions and was even set to throw a simulated game before rain and Orioles team picture day at Yankee Stadium scrapped that plan.

Still, he said none of it could replicate the feeling of a real game, because the reactions of the batters themselves often provided the best feedback on the sharpness of his pitches.

So when he took the mound on Saturday, Trachsel was looking forward to watching how batters reacted to his pitches.

He received plenty of instant feedback from the Tampa Bay Rays hitters, who looked good while trashing Trachsel. The Rays hammered the pitcher for nine runs in the first two innings, a meltdown that led to an 11-4 loss before 30,445 on '70s Night at Tropicana Field. The defeat was Baltimore's fourth straight and enough to send the Orioles crashing back down to the .500 mark.

After the game, Trachsel did not blame his latest clunker on the long layoff, which would have been a ready-made excuse for his 1 2/3 -inning, nine-run nightmare.

"I might be tipping my pitches, that's the only thing I can come up with," Trachsel said. "If that's not it, then I've got some serious things to try to figure out."

What bothered Trachsel most after his first start since May 9 wasn't so much what happened when he missed his spots, but the result of when he did make his pitches.

"There's a pattern going here where if I miss a spot, the ball's getting hit very hard," he said. "And there's no reason for that. At some point, you've got to have the guys at least fouling them off. That's not happening."

Said pitching coach Rick Kranitz, "They hit some pretty good pitches, which surprised me."

Before the game, Orioles Manager Dave Trembley held a 15-minute meeting with his team, in addition to several individual one-on-one conferences with players earlier in the day. He tweaked his lineup in an effort to jolt his team's slumping bats.

Luke Scott hit a two-run homer in the third inning, the 75,000th hit in franchise history. And Guillermo Quiroz made the most of his start, singling home Jay Payton, who later drove in a run.

But the Orioles managed to blow a chance to change the game in the first inning. Rays starter Edwin Jackson threw just three strikes in his first 17 pitches, and with one out he walked the bases loaded. Scott promptly ended the threat, grounding into a double play, and the Orioles discovered another creative way to come away with nothing.

"It might have made for a different ballgame," Trembley said. "But that didn't happen."

Even if the lineup changes had somehow turned the '08 Orioles into the '27 Yankees, it wouldn't have mattered after Trachsel's disastrous return.

Rookie Evan Longoria, who led the Rays' assault, bounced a mammoth three-run homer off the facade of the upper deck in deep left field in the first. He hit another homer in the second, this time a two-run shot, the first multi-homer game of his promising career, and finished with six RBI. And as Trembley noted, "it looked like he knew what was coming every at-bat."

The full damage: 1 2/3 innings, seven hits, nine runs, a performance that served as a reminder of why Trachsel was forced to deal with the long layoff in the first place.

With a string of off days, Trembley was faced with the choice of keeping Trachsel in his regular turn in the rotation at the expense of the team's other pitchers, whose schedules would have been significantly altered, or skipping Trachsel twice to keep everybody else on turn.

With Trachsel's recent problems -- which had already put his place in the rotation in jeopardy -- Trembley chose to skip the veteran. Both Trembley and Kranitz had hoped that Trachsel's experience would make him better equipped to handle the tough assignment of starting after an extended layoff.

But the rust showed, and by the time he walked off the mound, Trachsel's ERA had risen to 8.82. An off day on Thursday negates the need for a fifth starter, giving Trembley more time to ponder a change.

"I think that's definitely something we need to consider," he said.