Game 1: There's no way to sugarcoat it, the Rays were absolutely clobbered by Minnesota 11-5 at the Trop. The Twins hit 7 doubles and 4 HRs among their 19 hits as Tyler Glasnow and 3 Rays relievers just didn't have it tonight. Glasnow went 3.2 10 6 6 1 5 and gave up runs in each of the four innings he pitched in, although the Rays managed to pull within 6-4 after 4 on a 2-run double from Brandon Marsh. But Travis Swaggerty hit the 2nd of his 2 homers, a 3-run shot off Asa Lacy in the 6th, making it 9-4 and effectively ending the game. Swaggerty also had 2 doubles while Glasnow gave up a very long HR to Andrew Benintendi and DL Hall served up a 3-run shot to JD Martinez in the 8th. To make matters worse, Hall tore an elbow ligament on the pitch, and will miss the rest of this season and all of 2025 as well. Lacy allowed 5 runs in his 2 innings, Mitchell Verburg didn't allow any runs of his own but gave up 3 hits to allow a couple of Lacy's to score. On offense, Vidal Brujan and Keston Hiura had RBI hits, and Keibert Ruiz hit #12 in the 8th for the 5th Rays run, but it was a terrible day at the Trop.
September 10: Placed P DL Hall on 60-day IL with a torn elbow ligament, recalled IF Greg Jones from AAA Durham.
As mentioned earlier, Hall is done for 2025 as well and hopefully he can regain his stuff after the surgery. Jones was our #1 pick in 2019 and steadily climbed the ladder until stalling out at Durham the last couple of years. He's a switch-hitter, has 75 base-stealing speed and can hit some (60 gap power and 55 eye, albeit with a lot of swing and miss) and he can play 2B, SS and CF passably so he can be a useful player.
Game 2: After being blown out by the Twins last night, the Rays returned the favor although tonight's game was much closer for much longer before the Rays broke it open to win 8-1. The first inning saw the prototypical Rays run when Vidal Brujan led off with a single, stole 2nd (#51) and scored on Austin Meadows' 100th RBI of the season, a single. Nick Schnell (3 more hits tonight, he's unconscious) and Seth Beer singled to lead off the 5th and Brujan singled home Schnell to make it 2-0 in the 5th. The Twins got a run back in the 6th off Walker Buehler when Miguel Andujar tripled and scored on Andrew Benintendi's single, but that was all Buehler gave up on the night as he actually strung together 2 dominant starts for the Rays, going 6 4 1 1 4 10 with 2 of those four walks leading off the 7th when he was pulled for Jose Alvarado, who quelled the budding Twins rally with 3 up, 3 down. And that set the stage for the bottom of the 7th when the Rays went to town on starter Jhoan Duran and (mainly) rookie reliever Jordan Wicks. Brandon Marsh led off with a walk and Wicks came on, proceeded to give up a double to Brujan to put men at 2nd and 3rd, and then the odd decision to intentionally walk Wander to load the bases for Meadows. It was to set up lefty against lefty with Meadows and Rafael Devers due up next, but Meadows singled to score Marsh and Devers walked forcing in Brujan. The Twins got a force at the plate from Keibert Ruiz, but Alec Bohm's sac fly scored Meadows to make it 5-1, Schnell doubled in two more off Franklin Dacosta (a long-ago farmhand I traded away), and Beer singled in Schnell and it was 8-1. Sandy Gaston pitched the final 2 innings, whiffing 4 to finish off the game. The magic # is down to 8.
Game 3: It was quite the pitchers' duel tonight as Zack Godley and Matt Manning were each unhittable for long stretches, but the Twins ended up prevailing 3-1 in 11 innings. Nick Gordon had an RBI single off Manning in the 2nd but that was all he gave up as he went 8 3 0 0 1 12 in one of his best performances of the season. But not to be undone was Godley, who retired the first 17 Rays he faced until Brandon Marsh's 2-out single in the 6th. Jose Alvarado struck out the side in the 9th and it went 1-0 into the bottom of the ninth when singles by Vidal Brujan and Wander Franco put men on 1st and 3rd with nobody out, and Austin Meadows' sac fly scored Brujan to tie it. Edwin Diaz got the Rays from there, and after Jasseel De La Cruz escaped a jam of his own making with help from Marsh gunning down Miguel Andujar at the plate, we went to the 11th. Will Smith came in with lefties due up, and he allowed a pair of singles to two of them with one out. He whiffed Matt Olson to get the second out, but Andujar made up for being thrown out at the plate by lining a 2-run double that just eluded Meadows. Brujan reached to lead off the 11th for the Rays but was erased when Wander grounded into a DP; however Meadows walked and Rafael Devers doubled to put the tying runs in scoring position but Keibert Ruiz flied to center to end the game. The game obviously meant more to the Twins, who needed the win to stay 2 behind Detroit in the AL Central, while the Rays still reduced their magic # to 7 as the Orioles lost.
Team record: 91-50. Up next: an off-day followed by a weekend set in Beantown with the Red Sox.
It's been a while since I posted the standings, so here they are as we come down the stretch:
None of the divisions are in much doubt except the AL Central, and Baltimore, Minnesota and Seattle are fighting over two wild card spots. The Mets have an outside division shot in the NL but look more likely the wild card with Arizona fighting off the Miami Roughnecks for wild card #2.