Rays 3 Royals 1
Record: 20-11 Ten percentage points behind the Minnesota Twins (19-10) for the best record in baseball.
Attendance: 23,343. Maybe they showed up in embarrassment for the way they stayed home yesterday.
The bad news is that the Rays have still not won a one-run game this year. Going into the ninth inning they were tied at one with the Royals. Wily Peralta walked Daniel Robertson and then with two outs, the just announced American League Rookie of the Month of April, Brandon Lowe, hit a low liner into right field that kept carrying until it settled on the other side of the fence, his seventh round tripper of the year. So they won by two to keep their 0-5 record intact for one-run games. And for now, at least, that's just fine.
As Charlie Morton was quoted in the morning Tampa Bay Times on the Lowe homer, "To get up there in a tie ballgame and hit a go-ahead homer, right there to close out a series, it's a big deal. It's a really big deal."
Lowe, whose rookie status was preserved this year because he fell one at-bat short of rookie status last year, signed a six-year, $24 million contract extension during spring training.
This was a game that couldn't really be called "must win," it's only May 2 after all. But the way they looked losing two yesterday to the Royals, playing with neither energy or heart, was so bad that the Rays as a team had something to prove. In the end, they managed to escape Kansas City with a four-game split. It was a great relief, and the team was more than happy to leave Kansas City behind and move on to Baltimore. It's not that the Orioles are slim pickings, of course, but the 11-21 Royals (only the Marlins have a worse record) made one thing perfectly clear. If the Rays are going to play themselves into the post-season, they are going to have to bear down all the time, every game, every inning, every at-bat. Regardless of the competition.
Answering the bell for the Rays today was Charlie Morton who went six and two-thirds giving up five hits and a walk and striking out nine in 101 pitches. Good as he was, however, the score was tied when he left and the win went to Adam Kolarek, who got the last two outs in the eighth. Diego Castillo came on to pitch a perfect ninth for the save.
Alex Gordon, quoted by the AP in the game wrap-up, talked about Charlie Morton: "He's nasty. Usually I'm pretty frustrated when the offense only scores one run. But when the guy has stuff like that and commands it like that, it's hard to hit."
No comments:
Post a Comment