In the middle of June, you would have had a hard time convincing anyone, let alone Katie Bueller, the Rays were playing well. Even tonight, after the 3-1 victory that gave the Rays nine straight wins, she was still in total shock:
The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, and dweebies in Tampa Bay certainly enjoyed watching an expedient game which wrapped up in a crisp 2 hours and 21 minutes. The teams played this contest like a getaway game with just 10 hitters reaching base, but the Rays leveraged a big night from Nick Fortes along with a solo shot from Junior Caminero to best the Astros.
Nick Martinez threw a serviceable 5.1 innings blemished only by a meatball to Yordan Alvarez which was properly deposited over the right centerfield fence. Martinez has been flirting with homers his past few outings with several close calls, but Alvarez hit a no-doubter:
Martinez has enjoyed some favorable home run suppression this year, but he appears to be flirting with disaster in this area recently, but the indoor environments have helped preserve his good fortune. Kevin Kelly, Casey Legumina, and Bryan Baker got the final 11 outs of this contest without allowing anyone to reach base continuing their impressive work out of late.
The night belonged to Fortes, who drove in the game’s first run with a home run off Spencer Arrighetti to disrupt his excellent outing:
Fortes then came back up in the 8th and got one of those high fastballs he loves to tomahawk and took it high off the left centerfield wall:
Note that Yanier Diaz wanted a fastball out and away, but Enyel De Los Santos missed very high and Fortes was still able to get on top of a chin-level heater this high out of the zone:
This contest was textbook Rays baseball where the offense contributed just enough to support a stellar overall outing by the pitching staff. Martinez was pulled at 85 pitches before getting a third exposure to Cam Smith, who had already seen him well in his previous two plate appearances. Kelly earned his fifth win of the season while Baker nailed down his 23rd save with a 1-2-3 9th.
The Rays will go for a 10th consecutive win in what should be a fantastic matchup of starting pitching with Drew Rasmussen and Hunter Brown taking the mound for the two teams.
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