If you’d told me the Rays would only scratch across one run Sunday, I naively would have assumed they’d take the L and give the Yankees a chance to gain further ground on them in the AL East. Silly me. That run held up, thanks to a stellar pitching performance from Drew Rasmussen and a pair of Rays relievers.
Worse, as far as the AL East goes, Boston continued to be allergic to losing, beating up on the hapless Blue Jays, who you figure could be sellers at the trade deadline given their atrocious
season. Meanwhile, in a case of the grass seeming greener on the other side, the Yanks’ record heading into their Sunday night matchup with the Phillies would be good for a 6.5-game lead in the AL West. Sigh.
Tampa Bay Rays (62-43) 1, Cleveland Guardians (54-53) 0
There was a lot going on in this one. Let’s start with Tampa starter Drew Rasmussen. Steven Kwan lead off the game for Cleveland with a double. He was the only Guardian to record a hit off Rasmussen. Indeed, his was the only base hit of the game for Cleveland. From there, Rasmussen was almost perfect. When he departed after seven innings, his ledger was marred only by that double and a walk to Chase DeLauter. At only 87 pitches, it’s interesting to wonder if Tampa would have left him in to pursue history had Kwan not notched that earlier double.
Meanwhile, feel bad for Cleveland starter Parker Messick. 7.2 innings of one-run baseball is almost always enough to record a win. Unfortunately, not on Sunday. The outing lowers Messick’s ERA to a sparkling 2.59 but that will be of little solace after a hard-luck loss. And it was hard luck. The game’s only run scored in the fifth when, with a runner on third and one out, Cedric Mullins popped a bunt into the air. Luckily for him, it didn’t stay in the air too long and it fell into no man’s land between the mound and the first base line allowing the runner to scamper home. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the pitchers’ duel it featured, the game wrapped up in a crisp 1 hour, 58 minutes.
Other Games
Boston Red Sox (54-50) 6, Toronto Blue Jays (48-58) 1: The Blue Jays can’t do anything right. The reigning AL champs are in the midst of an awful season and Sunday was no different. Ranger Suarez, who’s been out with a groin injury then illness, made his return and hurled four shutout innings. From there, the Red Sox bullpen took over. Though the Jays managed a token run in the ninth, Beantown’s relievers were up to the task, recording the final 15 outs. Talk about an entire team slumping at once… for a whole season… just take a gander at the individual OPS marks throughout the Jays lineup, “headlined” by Vlad Guerrero Jr., whose OPS is down 148 points from last season (.848 to .700).
Chicago White Sox (55-49) 12, Houston Astros (52-55) 3: Munetaka Murakami had gone 13 games without a dinger and 10 without driving a run. Apparently, he’d had enough. Sunday was the Murakami show in Chi-town. The White Sox slugger hit two home runs and drove in six. Oh, and it was his Bobblehead Day! Great timing. That led the way as Chicago blasted five home runs total and hung at least two runs on each of the four Astros pitchers to enter the game. The win moves Chicago 2.5 games up on Cleveland, who as mentioned above lost to Tampa.
Texas Rangers (53-52) 4, Seattle Mariners (52-54) 6: Mediocrity, thy name is the American League West. Texas’ loss leaves them in first place in the division, half a game above .500. Seattle’s win moves them to within 1.5 games of first and the Astros, who looked abysmal for a large part of the first half, lurk two games out. Texas was cruising for most of this one, carrying a 3-1 lead into the seventh inning. That is where the wheels fell off, with two swings of the bat. First, Dominic Canzone clubbed a go-ahead three-run shot to make the score 4-3. Then, Randy Arozarena went back-to-back (and a belly-to-belly.. RIP John) to extend the lead to 5-3. Ezequiel Durán got Texas within one in the eighth with a solo shot of his own. But Canzone continued his strong day at the dish with an RBI double in the ninth to put the lead back to two.
