Ah, baseball.
The Rays looked unimpressive as they lost a series to the lowly New York Mets last week, and I’ll bet I am not the only Rays fan who watched those games and thought, “THIS is a playoff team?”
And when they came into Atlanta to play a Braves team that leads the division in which the Mets are sorry after-thoughts, I was not optimistic about the outcome.
But now they have taken a series from the Braves with one game remaining, and looked pretty sharp, if not dominant, in doing so.
The Rays largely relied on their small ball ways tonight, but the scoring started with a very, very long ball. It was one of those moments that broadcasters must relish. In the second innings, Brian Anderson and Dewayne Staats were chatting about Victor Mesa Jr. and how he has brought some pop into the lower part of the Rays lineup. And then Mesa hit this ball so hard and so far that the Atlanta outfielder didn’t even turn to watch it land in the stands.
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The Rays accumulated their runs mostly in the second and fourth innings, scoring three in each of those frames before tacking on an insurance run in the seventh.
Other than Mesa’s homerun, the other scores came on a characteristic night of offense for the Rays. They hit nine singles, took advantage of three walks and a hit by pitch. They managed three stolen bases, two on a fund double steal, although they did kind of botch one running play, with Mesa Jr. thrown out at home. Apparently the Braves catcher, Sean Murphy, has not yet thrown out a runner this year? (to be fair he’s only played in 21 games).
Less characteristically, the bottom part of the lineup accounted for much of the offense. To be sure, Diaz, Caminero and Hicks did each get a single and Diaz had an RBI thanks to a sac fly. But it was Mesa, Jr., Simpson, Mullins, Palacios and Mateo who set the pace. Mateo drove in two runs with an RBI single; Simpson and Mesa, Jr. each scored twice.
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On the pitching end, Griffin Jax improved considerably over last week’s disappointing return from the IL. He made it through five innings, giving up just a solo homerun along with one other hit and one walk. He wasn’t super sharp (lots of deep counts), he wasn’t get whiffs or strikeouts, he got lucky on some sizzling liners that ended up in outfielder gloves. But — five innings, just one run? We can live with that, at least for now. Cash cobbled together those last twelve outs between four relievers. Newly promoted Ty Johnson was a little wobbly, giving up a run on a walk and a hit while recording two outs, but Cam Booser finished off the sixth inning, and after that Cole Sulser and Steven Matz were near perfect for the final three innings.
The Rays and Braves play an early afternoon getaway game tomorrow, with two “old guys” — Nick Martinez and Martin Pérez — on the mound.
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