After reeling off five wins in a row (actually six with a win in the first game), the Rays came back to earth by dropping 2 of 3 at the Trop to the Guardians. Coupled with the Yankees sweeping the Angels, the Rays have dropped 2 games behind New York in the division race but are in the first wild card spot, a game up on the Angels and Mariners.
The series started off well when the Rays put 5 on the board in the first two innings and went on to a 6-4 win over Cleveland, their 6th straight win.
Andrew Greckel bashed a 3-run homer in the 1st (#14),
Kelly Crumpton added a solo shot in the 2nd (#7) and
Wander Franco stayed hot going 2-4 with a double, steal and RBI. Later
Jhon Diaz hit his first MLB homer for some insurance.
Dustin May was excellent one again, improving to 7-1 with a 7 5 3 2 0 5 outing and
DL Hall had a 1-2-3 9th for save #6.
The bats, which had been on a roll, went mostly silent in a 3-1 loss to Cleveland in the second game. Aided by a 2-out
Kelly Crumpton error, Cleveland scored 3 off
Joe Ryan in the first and while that was all they'd get, it was also all they needed. Ryan (6-3) pitched well and lowered his ERA to 2.14 after going 6 4 3 1 1 6.
Alex Kirilloff's 7th-inning solo shot (#7) was the sum total of the offense.
After fighting back from 4-0 down to cut the Cleveland lead to 4-3, the Rays bullpen served up another soul-crushing homer to let the Guardians pull away for a 7-3 win. Nolan Jones tagged
Christian Chamberlain for a 3-run shot (Jones homered in each game of the series) in the 7th which short-circuited the comeback, the 3rd homer Chamberlain's allowed in 16 IP this year.
JT Ginn was hit for a 4-run 3rd including a 3-run homer and they fell behind 4-0 but
Angelo DiSpigna had a 2-run double to help cut the lead down to 4-3. Ginn (3-5) finished 6 7 5 5 0 3, with the Jones homer bringing in the leadoff man he allowed to reach in the 7th.
Team record: 30-24. Next up: 3 games in Oakland.
After the finale we made a trade:
The deal taking weeks was BS, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing as
Tylor Megill came off the IL and I wanted to keep
Landon Knack up as he'd pitched so well since being recalled (a combined line of 6.2 7 0 0 1 10 over 4 appearances) so someone had to go. And that was Detmers, who was out of options and never really pitched well at all for us after being claimed on waivers from these same Angels late last season. I think we did well in return getting Busch, giving us another option at 1B who will go to Durham. Busch is more of a doubles/OBP guy than a slugger and was hitting 321/406/463 in AAA after hitting 290/382/461 last season. He's 29 so we're not talking a lot of upside though.