ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) -The Tampa Bay Rays reconvened for the second half of the season, confident the seven-game losing streak they took into the All-Star break is not a sign they’re fading.
Instead, manager Joe Maddon reiterated to his players Thursday that the skid is typical of what every team goes through during a long season and there’s no reason they can’t remain in the AL East race.
“I congratulated the whole group on a great first half, and now it’s time to begin another journey in the second half,” Maddon said before a workout at Tropicana Field, where the Rays (55-39) open a weekend series against the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday.
“Many times when you’re young, you think that something like this is going to happen on an annual basis, and sometimes it doesn’t. It can. But sometimes it just goes away. I just want us to treat all of these moments with the respect that it deserves. If we do that, we have a pretty good chance of being there at the end of the year.”
Tampa Bay led the division by five games before its longest losing streak of the season dropped the Rays a half game behind the Boston Red Sox.
The slide includes an 0-6 road trip that began with a pair of losses at Yankee Stadium and concluded with four straight at Cleveland, which had dropped 10 in a row before the Rays came to town.
Good pitching and solid defense have been keys to the best start in franchise history. They’ll need more of the same, as well as better offensive production, to stay in the race the rest of the summer.
Carl Crawford, who’s mired in a career-worst 0-for-25 slump, called the week leading up to the break a wake-up call, as well as a learning experience for a team that’s new to increased attention that goes along with being a contender.
“It was different territory for us. I don’t know if we didn’t know how to handle it well or we were just tired,” Crawford said.
To a man, though, the Rays stressed it’s too early to draw conclusions about what’s to come.
The team remains open to the prospect of tinkering with the roster before next month’s non-waiver trade deadline.
But noting Tampa Bay’s seven-game losing skid was preceded by a seven-game winning streak, executive vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman emphasized he doesn’t feel a sense of urgency to make changes.
“Had we flip-flopped our seven-game winning streak and our seven-game losing streak, people would be talking about how we went into the break as one of the hottest teams in baseball, you don’t need anything at all,” Friedman said.
“I guess it sounds trite, but we have a lot of confidence in the guys we have here and we have confidence in the guys that we have in the minor leagues that we feel like can come up and augment this team. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not very active in conversations because we have a responsibility to look and examine everything that’s out there. If something makes sense, we’ll absolutely do it. But we by no means feel any pressure to force a move that’s not there.”
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