The Rays lost another blowout tonight, one in their starter could not complete four innings and the subsequent relievers didn’t offer much relief.
Nick Martinez….I don’t know, I love the guy for so many reasons, but after his amazing first couple of months, it seems like every three, maybe even two outings is a clunker. The only good news is that best I can recall he’s never had two clunkers in a row, so I look forward to him pitching 7 strong innings five days from now.
Tonight he put the Rays behind
4-0 early on, a homer, some doubles, yada yada yada
The Rays tried their “let’s hit a bunch of singles and see what happens” approach and what happened was little, ergo the bases loaded one out third inning that ended with a double play.
And as often happens, after the Blue Jays retired the Rays without letting them score, they came back the next inning and yada yada yada 6-0.
The Rays did manage to cut that lead in half in the bottom of the fourth. Again it was single, single, single, single with a wild pitch in the mix to score three runs. Can someone please hit a double? Please?
But then Steven Matz, who had replaced the struggling Martinez the previous inning, returned for inning two against the Blue Jays and yada yada yada 8-3 Blue Jays. Bottom of the fifth inning Rays again had an opportunity but it was single, single, double play. No runs home.
Seventh inning: Jesse Scholtens back from the IL. He pitched a scoreless sixth but in the seventh, yada yada yada Blue Jays up, 10-3.
The Rays did get another two runs in the eighth inning — again, a bunch of singles and a couple of sac flies, to make the score 10-5.
Now when your team gives up ten runs you naturally look at the pitching, and there was nothing to be proud of tonight. BUT. The Rays had 13 hits. Every single hit was a single. This happened the last time they had a bad stretch as well — it wasn’t that they weren’t hitting at all, but that no one was hitting for power. So yes I want to see a better pitching performance (looking at you, stopped Drew Rasmussen), but could someone please hit a ball out of the park?
