Friday, June 14. Game 69: Better late than never

Rays 9, Angels 4

Record:  42-29

Attendance:  21,598  Yes, that's not a misprint!  It was Pride Night as the Rays welcomed the LGBTQ community with rainbow banners on display, but who would have thought that was going to put so many bodies in the seats?


If you turned off the TV with the Angels ahead 4-0 in the top of the sixth, you missed one of the Rays all-time best comebacks, as unlikely as that might sound.

Austin Meadows, who had taken his previous 14 at-bats off, opened the sixth with a double.  Then Yandy Diaz drove him in with a single.  With no available Angel left-handers in the bullpen, Manager Kevin Cash went with a series of left-handed pinch hitters against the Angel righty relievers.  Ji-Man Choi sent Diaz to third with a single.  Then with two out, Kevin Kiermaier squeezed a slow grounder through the right side hole to score Diaz, 4-2 Angels.  Avisail Garcia then singled in Choi and Kiermaier.  4-4.  And then topping the inning off, Tommy Pham singled in pinch runner Travis d'Arnaud.  Rays up, 5-4.  The only extra base hit was Meadows' double, and four of the five runs were scored with two out.  Don't tell me baseball is boring!

But the Rays weren't finished.  In the bottom of the seventh, Choi hit a two-run homer, d'Arnaud drove home a run with a double, and Pham singled home the ninth run in two innings leaving the Angels staggered. and senseless as the referee counted them out.

Of course that wasn't the whole story.  More important was the continuing struggles of Blake Snell (three and a third innings, 4 runs, 5 hits, 4 walks), who it seems clear by now will not regain the total pitching mastery that marked his 2018 season.  At this point Cash has to be thinking about strategies (and perhaps trading deadline deals) to make up for the huge disappointment Snell has been so far.  If the Rays are going to be a post-season factor, they are going to need better starting options, a dependable closing solution, and a power-hitting first baseman like Edwin Encarnacion.

Last winter when Encarnacion was traded from Cleveland to Seattle, there was wide speculation the Rays would trade for him as consolation prize for losing a bidding war with the Twins for Nelson Cruz. That didn't happen, it was said, because Encarnacion was not so highly valued by the Rays as Cruz.  But Encarnacion has been having one of his best seasons (21 HRs, 49 RBIs,) for a team in last place, which should argue that the Mariners would let him go for a few youngsters who are still a year or two away.  It would be a shame to waste this very fine team's 2019 season for want of an ingredient or two that could be addressed and fixed in June.

For today, however, we have Charlie Morton on the mound to keep the momentum from last night.