ST. PETERSBURG -- The Devil Rays begin a nine-game road trip on Tuesday at Boston. Then they will play the Rangers and Yankees before heading home.

Not exactly an easy trip given the fact that the Rays are a combined 50-118 in those parks. Rays manager Joe Maddon took an opposite view of the upcoming trip.

"I see this as a fun situation," he said. "Boston is a fun ballpark. Texas, I've played against them a lot with the Angels, obviously, but hey, you look at every team in every division, nobody's easy. I don't care where you go, they're all tough; anybody can beat you on any given night. ... Three really good teams and we'll have to play well. That's the way it is."

A strange element for this particular trip is fact the team heads to Texas in between Boston and New York.

"I don't know if it's the worst trip we've ever made, it just doesn't make any sense," Carl Crawford said. "I don't understand why it's like that. We got a terrible schedule this year, all the night games. Getaway games are at 7, those games usually are daytime games, that way you can travel. Then you go on some of them where you go all the way across the country on the same day.

"Usually when we play New York and Boston, it's usually like we're not going to fly somewhere else when we're already up there. Who made that schedule this year? Are we getting punished for being last or what?"

Veteran catcher Josh Paul said he's been on worse trips.

"At least we have a day off in New York," said Paul, referring to April 24 after leaving Texas. "I've been on a four-city road trip that took us coast-to-coast before. It is what it is."

Major League Baseball's schedule is now computerized after years of it being done by hand. Paul said it's a "push" for which one is better.

"I think what you see more with the computer thing now is two-game series," Paul said. "Those are rough things. You don't unpack your bag. You come in, you're wearing your suit and you wear your suit to the next game."

Maddon offered the last word: "Coming from a West Coast team, the travel is atrocious, I'm not all that horrified by it. ... Fortunately we're not taking a bus."

Walking Rays: The Rays had drawn a Major League high 55 walks entering Sunday, which is the first time the team had ever led the Major Leagues in walks at any point in the season other than after one game. The club's previous best after 12 games was 42 in 2002 and 1998.

"We were going to attempt to strike out less, and by striking out less, sometimes you walk more," Maddon said. "But I did not think it would get to this point."

Maddon conceded that any team would likely have walked a lot against Baltimore starter Daniel Cabrera, who walked nine Rays hitters in five innings on Wednesday.

"But [Saturday] I thought we did a really good job of laying off that sinker," Maddon said. "The first time through we weren't, Hendu [hitting coach Steve Henderson] was on them in the dugout, 'Make him bring it up, make him bring it up.' He must have said that 50 times if he said it once. So the second time through they did a lot better job of taking the pitch down and forcing their pitches into the strike zone. So I was really happy with that."

Maddon said the team's mental at-bats have "gotten very good."

"That's what I've noticed more than anything," Maddon said. "Physically, they're all the same cats. But their minds have been working pretty well. ... It's just been a good solid mental approach by our hitters. There's been no giveaway at-bats."

No more losers: Sunday's game against the Royals marked the final game of a stretch of 13 that opened the season in which the Rays played against teams that finished below .500 in 2005. The coming trip begins a stretch that will see the Rays play 14 of 19 games against teams that finished above .500 in 2005. April and May are the only two months in which the Rays have never had a winning record.

Up next: The Rays travel to Boston on Tuesday to begin a three-game series against the Red Sox. Left-hander Casey Fossum will start for the Rays and he'll be opposed by right-hander Matt Clement.