Rays 6, Red Sox 5
Record: 61-48
Attendance: 36,412
The Rays put on a gritty performance Tuesday night to beat the Red Sox 6-5, but they had to come back from deficits of 2-0 and 5-4--and Kevin Cash's terrible decision to pull struggling starter Charlie Morton after four and two-third innings and only 85 pitches. Morton's replacement was Adam Kolarek, who immediately gave up a two-run homer to Andrew Benintende as the Red Sox took the lead 5-4. For what it's worth, Cash acknowledged the mistake after the game, and the whole thing was defused when the Rays managed to pull the game out anyway. But mistakes like this one are just as bad as the Ray's sloppy base running and the bullpen's habit of giving up late inning home runs in tight games. Cash has earned the right to be wrong now and then, but this bad decision could well have been catastrophic in a close game with playoff implications.
After Kolarek, who got the win despite giving up the homer to Benintende, came the usual sequence of relievers who come in, we are led to believe, according to batting order matchups: Castillo, Poche, Roe, Drake, and Emilio Pagan, who got the final four outs and recorded his eighth save.
Offensively, Austin Meadows drove in Matt Duffy with a triple in the third, followed by a three-run fifth inning that saw solo homers by Travis d'Arnaud (453 feet over the Green Monster and out of the park) and Avasail Garcia plus a run-scoring fielder's choice by newcomer Eric Sogard. Their last two runs came in on a Garcia double in the sixth. And that was it for scoring as the bullpens squared off for some high drama innings for the rest of the way.
It was a good win coming off the high drama against the Blue Jays, but game two will begin at 7:10 Wednesday night, so hold on to your hat for another wild ride.
No news on trades as the deadline looms at 4 PM today (Wednesday).
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