{"id":8132,"date":"2014-06-09T11:17:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T15:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/?p=8132"},"modified":"2014-06-09T11:17:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T15:17:11","slug":"rays-ready-to-make-a-change-at-closer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/2014\/06\/09\/rays-ready-to-make-a-change-at-closer\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays ready to make a change at closer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"grantbalfour\"<\/p>\n

Grant Balfour turned a 5-0 game into a loss on Sunday and it may be time that the Tampa Bay Rays made a change at the back end of their bullpen.<\/p>\n

“He’s our closer as of today,” Rays <\/a>manager Joe Maddon told reporters.<\/p>\n

“Even if I was going to change anything, I wouldn’t tell you guys anyhow.” Maddon added.<\/p>\n

Jake McGee or Juan Carlos Oviedo could soon replace Balfour as the Rays closer. Balfour had two outs in the inning and was ahead 0-2 to the third. Instead it quickly turned from there.<\/p>\n

“That’s the disappointing part,” Balfour said. “I’m a couple inches away from snapping off a curveball and striking out the side today and you’re not going to ask me a single question. You’re the best player in baseball because you struck out the side. Instead, I’m standing here because I gave up five. So I’ll wear it and I’ll be back tomorrow.”<\/p>\n

In 24 games this season Balfour has a 6.46 ERA and a 1.65 WHIP to go along with nine saves. It’s a far cry from the 2.56 ERA and 1.05 WHIP he posted over the last two seasons in Oakland while picking up 62 saves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grant Balfour turned a 5-0 game into a loss on Sunday and it may be time that the Tampa Bay Rays made a change at the back end of their bullpen. “He’s our closer as of today,” Rays manager Joe Maddon told reporters. “Even if I was going to change anything, I wouldn’t tell you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[503,570,501,179],"coauthors":[6],"class_list":["post-8132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-front","tag-grant-balfour","tag-mlb","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8134,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132\/revisions\/8134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8132"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}