The Rays have been without a closer for over a month now. That shouldn’t have made a difference going into the top of ninth with 5-1 lead over the Florida Marlins. David Price went six and a third innings and Joe Nelson an effective one and two-thirds innings to give the Rays one-run ball over eight innings. Then came the ninth.

Lets first go over who was available and the number of appearances they had made since Wednesday.

Not sure why Joe Maddon put Chad Bradford in the ninth. The Rays had Randy Choate and Lance Cormier rested. The matchups did favor Bradford since the first three guys due to bat were right handers starting with, Hanely Ramirez, Jorge Cantu, and Dan Uggla. Grant Balfour and Dan Wheeler weren’t available and keeping J.P. Howell out would be beneficial going into a crucial Toronto Blue Jays series with Roy Halladay set to start on Monday. Not sure why Maddon choose Cormier, who I think was warming up in the bullpen sometime later in the game. Maddon may have wanted to save Cormier for long relief with Jeff Niemann to start on Monday. But that shouldn’t be.

Putting Cormier in a tough ninth innings situation can prove useful to him and the Rays in order to see if he can handle it if by some chance he would have to pitch in one. The Rays were up by three runs and Cormier has pitched well all year long and I doubt he wil give up more than that in one inning, especially against the Marlins who weren’t hitting well all season.

And by putting Cormier in, you would save everyone else including Bradford and Howell for Monday’s game.

Bradford could have pitched well and I wouldn’t be as mad as Howell would stay on the bullpen bench, resting up. Not a bad choice in order to keep the lead and the game. But this wasn’t really a good decision for the Toronto series, which has two night games starting Monday plus a day game on Wednesday.

Now we won’t have Howell in for Monday and likely not Bradford either since Cormier wasn’t allowed to finish the game.