Rays 7, Red Sox 4
Record: 93-64
Attendance: 8,779. Tropicana Field. The joint should have been rocking with fans.
With the wild card pressure heavy on the Rays, they entered Monday's game knowing they had to win. The A's and Tribe are not giving up, so every game from here on is a must-win game. But they were scoreless in the first three innings, aimless, and the worst part of it was Blake Snell's performance. After his last excellent performance (his first since returning from the IL), there were high hopes for this important game.
Snell, however, wasn't able to get through the second inning, giving up two hits and three walks before being yanked. Things looked bleak. Pete Fairbanks gave up a second run in the third, and Austin Pruitt gave up two more in the top of the fourth. The Red Sox were on the verge of busting the game open.
But it turned out it was the Rays who busted it open in the bottom of the fourth. A pair of singles brought Ji-Man Choi to the plate, and he promptly homered to make it 4-3. One batter later, Brandon Lowe, making only his second appearance since taking the summer off for medical reasons, hit a ball farther than the estimated 441 feet to right field. It was a monster. That tied the game. And finally, after Keven Kiermaier was hit by a pitch, Willy Adames hit his 20th home run of the season, and suddenly the Rays had turned a 4-0 deficit into a 6-4 lead.
After the fourth inning, Rays pitchers put together five scoreless innings, with Pruitt (despite his shaky work) getting the win and Poche getting the save, his second.
And so the Red Sox are finished for the year--and the Yankees come to town tomorrow for the final two home games of the year. Another must win game.
The Don Zimmer MVP of the Rays as voted on by the Tampa Bay chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, came out a dead heat, the co-winners being Austin Meadows and Charlie Morton.
No comments:
Post a Comment