Tonight felt like a Rays recreation of yore, with yore being seasons through which Tampa Bay was successful quite a lot of video games.
This recreation had all of it — nice pitching, stellar protection, some well timed hitting, and an opportunity to argue about Kevin Money’s bullpen administration.
An actual pitcher’s duel prevailed for greater than half the sport. Zach Littell for the Rays and Chris Paddack for the Twins traded zeros for 5 and half innings, with Littell having a little bit of a bonus — he’d given up three hits, however two of these runners have been erased on double performs. He subsequently had gotten by six innings with underneath 70 pitches.
The Rays broke the sport open within the backside of the sixth inning. Brandon Lowe and Junior Caminero each obtained hits, and Aranda got here up with two males in scoring place. He homered to proper area to place the Rays up 3-0.
Because the inning continued, Kameron Misner singled, and went to second when reliever Brock Stewart threw errantly in a choose off try. There was a prolonged pause at that time, because the Twins claimed that Misner had stepped past first base and by no means touched the bag a second time as he rushed to make it to second base on the wild throw. It took a number of minutes and a Zapruder film-like evaluation for the reviewers to find out that he hadn’t truly crossed over first base and subsequently didn’t must re-touch the bag.
Littell got here out to begin the seventh inning and appeared to be cruising, getting the primary out on a floor ball. The second batter of the inning was Ty France, and France appeared (to my eye) to jut his elbow into the trail of a splitter — he could not have carried out this deliberately, however I believed you could possibly argue that he didn’t make any effort to get out of the way in which, and so he took first base.
At that time, Money got here to take Littell out, which I discovered mystifying.
Isn’t the beauty of a man beginning the seventh inning with underneath 70 pitches that he can preserve pitching?
Possibly Money feels he must be even MORE protecting of his starters when they’re pitching within the warmth. Possibly Littell was displaying indicators of fatigue that have been obvious to Money and Snyder even when not obvious to a fan watching on TV.
However at any price, Littell was lifted with a person on base, and so after all — after all — Garrett Cleavinger offers up a house run to the subsequent batter make it a 3-2 recreation.
However the Rays hitters weren’t carried out for the night time. Within the backside of the eighth inning, Aranda and Mead every singled, and Caballero hit a ball to deep left area. Twins left fielder Trevor Larnach tracked the ball, adopted it again to the monitor, again to the wall, completely timed his leap to catch the ball…however simply managed to deflect it off his glove, with Caballero heading to second as each Aranda and Mead scored to re-establish a 3 run lead.
But it surely obtained even higher, as a result of then Danny Jansen homered to virtually precisely the identical space the place Caballero hit his double, however a number of ft deeper. That gave the Rays a 7-2 lead.
Then, Christopher Morel additionally hit a ball again to the left area wall, and Larnach as soon as once more tracked it again, and as soon as once more solely managed to deflect, fairly than catch the ball. One other double, though Morel was stranded at second.
A troublesome night time for Trevor Larnach. And he would possibly must get a bit of nervous about retaining that left area place, as a result of as he clumsily misplayed two doubles, the fan within the stands simply behind him managed to catch Jansen’s house run completely….together with her hat.
It’s good being over .500, the air is a lot clearer up right here.
