Thursday, October 10. GAME FIVE, ALDS. Rays are down for the year, but heads are held high.

Rays 1, Astros 6

ALDS Record:  2-3.  Rays lose best of five series and an opportunity to play against the New York Yankees in the American League Championship series.  The winner of that series will represent the AL in the World Series.  The Rays' season is now officially ended.

Attendance:  43,418.  Minute Maid Park

The Rays could very well have won game five of the ALDS against the Astros. In fact, they should have won it.  Tyler Glasnow tipped his pitches in the first inning which resulted in an Astro outburst:  three singles and a double accounting for three runs in the first ten pitches.  Then after an out, another single for another run.  4-0 Astros.  The game was virtually over before it had begun.  The Rays bullpen held the Astros scoreless for the next six innings, while the Rays scored on an Eric Sogard homer in the second.  Had it not been for the pitch tipping, the Rays could have gone into the late innings winning 1-0.  In the eighth Emilio Pagan gave up a pair of homers, and the game was not 2-1 Astros, but an out-of-reach 6-1.

Of course adding to the Rays' misery on Thursday night was Gerrit Cole, who threw his second masterpiece of the series.  He went eight innings, 108 pitches, and gave up only two hits, that one run, and two walks.  He struck out ten.  But a one-run game is a different animal from a 4-1 game going into the late innings.  Pitch tipping tipped this game in the Astro's favor.

That said, there is no bitterness, nothing but gratitude and thanks to all the Rays for giving their fans a great summer that lasted clear into the middle of October.  GM Erik Neander, gets the credit along with Chaim Bloom, Sr. VP of baseball operations, for putting this team together.  Kevin Cash has emerged as one of baseball's premier managers, smart, innovative, fearless--and he refuses any credit for the team's success, which he says is strictly the players' doing.  It has been a pleasure watching him grow as a manager over his five-year tenure.  And the people who hired Cash deserve credit too for seeing all the potential in a young managerial candidate:  Principal owner Stu Sternberg and co-presidents Brian Auld and Matthew Silverman. The 2019 season had many heroes.  They fell a little short of their goals, but the ones they did achieve were milestones in a franchise whose future in the Tampa Bay region is still a huge question mark.

Primarily the players get the kudos of course.  There were many times, in the summer especially, when it was possible to second guess the manager and wonder why some of the players were still on the roster.  But gradually the team played its way out of a long slump and emerged as a force to be reckoned with--position players, a limited corps of starting pitchers, a bullpen, unlike any other in baseball history, that took on a huge portion of the team's success, a defense that got better and better all year, and hitters who refused to believe they were out of a game.  It was thrilling to watch them all year, a pleasure and a privilege.  Rays up.

One last thought:  What if the last two sell-outs against Houston in the ALDS are signs that a turnaround in attendance is underway?  That possibility might just alter the upcoming conversations between the politicians and the Rays' front office.  Maybe the greatest achievement of the 2019 Rays will be that they managed to keep the franchise in the Tampa Bay area.  Hope springs eternal.