2007 Tampa Bay Devil Rays

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays' 2007 season, the 10th season in franchise history, involves the Devil Rays trying to improve on their 2006 season, where they finished last in the AL East division, and managed to finish the season with a league-worst record of 61-101. During the offseason they signed Japanese infielder Akinori Iwamura to a three year deal. Their manager is Joe Maddon who enters his 2nd season with the Devil Rays.

1 Regular season
2 Team records falling so far
- 2.1 Season standings
- 2.2 Game log
3 Current roster
4 References

[edit] Regular season

The Devil Rays opened their 2007 season April 2, on the road against the defending division champion New York Yankees. The bullpen blew a lead and Tampa lost, 9-5^[1], but came back to win the third game, 7-6 (the second of the opening series was rained out). They suffered a setback in the middle of April when new third baseman Iwamura, off to a hot start with a .339 batting average to that point, suffered an oblique strain and went on the disabled list.^[2] However, the team continued to play better than in past years, and on May 4 moved into a tie for second place, the latest that Tampa had been that high in the standings since the 1999 season.^[3]

The Rays trailed off going into May, falling eventually back into last place, but surged into their series in Orlando, Florida, against the Texas Rangers, which they swept. After the series with the Rangers, they won only one of the next seven games, skidding to a then season low, nine games below .500.

After a 9-4 win against the Dodgers to improve their record to 33-40 on June 24, the Devil Rays went on to lose 11 straight games and went on to lose 13 of 14 games since the Dodgers series and went into the All-Star break 34-53. After the break it wasn't much better losing 3 games out of 4 against the Yankees in their 1st series after the break and went on to lose 8 straight games between July 21 to July 28. The low point of that Losing streak were two dismal losses to the Yankees. One game losing 17-5 and the other 21-4.

For the Devil Rays it was a July to forget but things were getting better in August. Improvements made to the bullpen at the trade deadline led to shorter losing streaks and, eventually, more series wins. On August 11, Starting pitcher Edwin Jackson pitched the Devil Rays 1st complete game shutout of the year in a 3-0 win against the Rangers. On August 25, Pitcher Scott Kazmir went 8 innings with a career high 13 strikeouts in a 14-3 win against the Oakland Athletics and in that series the Rays took 3 of 4 games out scoring the A's 33 to 9 in the last three games of that series. The hot streak continued with a sweep of the tailspinning Baltimore Orioles and series wins at the Yankees and home against the Orioles and the Blue Jays before finally losing 2 of 3 at the Boston Red Sox. They are 13-7 in their last 20 games.

[edit] Team records falling so far

Andy Sonnanstine broke a team record with seven consecutive strikeouts on June 10 in a victory over the Florida Marlins, his first win of the season.

On September 3, Carlos Pena Broke the club single-season home run record with his 35th shot, a two-run homer off Jim Hoey in the seventh inning. As of September 13, he has 39 home runs and 111 runs batted in, also giving him a shot at the team's single-season RBI record (117 by Jorge Cantú in 2005). He may become the first Devil Ray to finish a season with at least a 1.000 OPS (his current OPS is 1.013).

Carl Crawford, with 984 career hits as of September 12, has a shot at becoming the first Devil Rays player to record 1,000 hits with the club before the season ends.