Patrick Zalupski should do a roll call for the next ownership group meeting because Cal Quantrill is a majority statistical owner of the franchise. Quantrill, with his effort tonight, is now 4-0 lifetime against Tampa Bay over seven starts as he led the Rangers to a 6-0 win over the Rays.
Quantrill does not light up the radar guns in today’s game of velocity, but his combination of command and repetoire has given the Rays and the league fits this summer:
The Rays last faced Quantrill on July 28th and
were held to a single run with just over five innings of work. Quantrill worked seven complete tonight while barely breaking a sweat scattering two singles and two late walks while striking out five. The two singles came on consecutive plate appearances with two outs in the third, but Chandler Simpson was unable to extend the two-out rally. The two walks came in the 7th inning as Quantrill, but Jorge Mateo was unable to move the traffic and allowing Quantrill to spin seven shutout innings on the evening
The righty has now pitched to a 2.34 ERA over his last 11 starts since taking over for the injured Jack Leiter in the rotation. He generated just nine swings and misses in the contest, but primarily used an up/down approach in the zone with his two fastballs while extending the zone with his splitter to get a lot of soft contact in the contest:
The game was never particularly close given the Rays only had a runner reach second base three times on the evening, but the Rangers broke the game open in the the 5th when Shane McClanahan left a changeup up and over the plate. Seager had twice hit deep flyballs off the lefty, but this one went six rows deep into the bleachers:
McClanahan had just five swings and missed in this contest, which was his lowest single-game total of the season. Casey Legumina finished the final three innings of the contest allowing the final two runs while the offense picked up just one more hit by Diaz after the consecutive singles by Fortes and Diaz back in the 3rd inning. A Jonathan Aranda hat trick accounted for half of the six strikeouts on the evening in a game that felt as close as the 73-0 football game I watched on my other screen this evening.
