Two notes:
1. The Champs of the Past series will conclude tomorrow, I will be combining both the 2005 White Sox and 2006 Cardinals in the interest of moving onto something far more relevant and interesting.
2. I'm sure you've noticed by now, but I would like to formally welcome Sky Kalkman (otherwise known as Skyking162) to the BtB staff. We've wanted him here for quite a while and he finally gave in.

This is going to be a bit unorganized but I have a few points to through out on Kazmir.

Six Innings

When you consider he had a 20+ pitch first and he ended his night five innings later with 98 total. After back-to-back sub-five inning starts to begin August Kazmir has went 5, 6, 6, 5.1, and now 6 in his last five starts.

Five walks/57% strikes

Kazmir's control was iffy tonight, look at the throw to Nady early on for proof. I'm not too happy about either measure, but with one hit countering the excess amount of free passes he didn't get burned. Which brings up...

One hit/11 strikes swinging

Encouraging.

Six groundballs/Five flyballs

Encouraging, although I would love to see just a few more of those flyballs turn into groundballs.

Seven strikeouts

Encouraging.

80% Fastballs

Dioner Navarro lied when he said Kazmir used all of his pitches. What he meant to say was Kaz used all one pitch. It worked tonight, but I still would like to see him mix his change and slider back into rotation more.

In the clubhouse...

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So for the first time ever most local residents won't be turning from the Yankees Rays to the Buccaneers this weekend as the NFL season kicks off but that doesn't stop you from also reading about the other team in town. For that I defer to JScott and crew over at Buc'Em. JScott is better with Photoshop than I am with Excel, if that means anything.

A gas leak can only hide for so long and tonight the Rays' version blew up. No, not Edwin Jackson, but Eric Hinske in left field. Two instances come to mind; the ball he dove on and missed, then fumbled upon reaching it and the one he played off of the wall despite B.J. Upton being in a better position to A) field it and B) throw it. I'm not going to say that he cost us the game, because overall this was a putrid effort.

Edwin only drew two swinging strikes tonight, a slider against Alex Rodriguez early on and a fastball on Derek Jeter. Edwin threw 46 strikes tonight out of 70 pitches, and 52 of those were fastballs. The rest were mainly sliders with a few changes mixed in.  He only walked one and struck two out. It's hard to pin the hits on him, and really I thought it was one of his better starts, but alas the results weren't pretty tonight, even if the processes weren't awful.

On the somewhat bright side we saw the first instant replay review in the history of the league. It didn't go our way yet that's still history and history is something we should cherish, I think.

The San Diego Padres aren't having a great season, although they've been a bit unlucky, but recently a ton of new names joined their team, including young pitchers Wade LeBlanc and Josh Geer. Rather than send one of them into relief work or remove Cha Seung Baek or Shawn Estes the Padres decided to do something different for the next few weeks and are going to a six-man rotation.

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Apparently our umpire tonight is a known douchebag.

Something that has flown under the radar for the Rays is the performance of Scott Kazmir. The team is winning despite Kazmir's tRA sitting at 3.99, the highest since 2005. Is there a reason for the young ace's regression, or is it simply a hiccup in his promising career?

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