Game 1: A scoreless game into the 6th inning turned into an 8-2 Rays win after White Sox starter Mike Daniel lost the plate and the Rays ended up scoring 7 times to extend the winning streak to 9. Until the 6th Daniel was baffling Rays hitters, holding them to 2 hits and one walk. But Gabriel Moreno led the inning off with a single, Daniel walked the next two, and Nate Clark's sac fly made it 1-0. Daniel whiffed Jasson Dominguez but gave up an RBI single to Bobby Witt Jr (extending his hitting streak to 14) then issued two more walks with Isaac DeLeon's forcing in a run, Connor Kirkley singled in a run, and then Daniel walked Moreno to force in another run. He got the long-overdue hook, but then Ricky Widmar singled in two more to make it 7-0. Rodolfo Rivas added an RBI double in the 7th. Jon Hayes started and won his third straight start after two clunkers to start his Rays career, going 6 6 1 1 1 4. David Saldana pitched the final 3, allowing a run on 4 hits to grab his first career MLB save.
Dude, your timing is terrible:
Game 2: The Rays had their 9-game winning streak snapped in a tough loss at Guaranteed Rate Field 4-3. They had plenty of baserunners couldn't manage to get them home in large part due to an uncharacteristic 15 strikeouts from Rays batters today. Trailing by a run, they had a pair of men on in both the 8th and 9th with 0 or 1 out but couldn't get them home, and a Connor Kirkley error in the 5th opened the door for a pair of RBI singles off Jack Leiter that put the White Sox ahead to stay. Things got off to a good start when Ricky Widmar led off the game with HR #5 and Nate Clark followed with #8 to give them a quick 2-0 lead, but they had 2 more on in the inning and couldn't drive them in, which was an omen for the rest of the game. The one hit they did get with RISP was in the 4th when Widmar singled in a run to put them up 3-1. Leiter was battling runners all game long but pitched OK, going 6.2 8 4 2 3 6 and Evan Godwin was brilliant in relief striking out 3 of the 4 hitters he faced. But the lack of the big hit doomed them. Bobby Witt Jr did get an 8th-inning single to extend his hitting streak to 15 games.
Game 3: It was a strange game which saw the Rays not even get a baserunner until the 5th inning and only manage 2 hits through 7 innings yet one they won 9-4. They were befuddled by White Sox starter Danny Knight until Bobby Witt Jr. led off the 5th with a triple, extending his hitting streak to 16 games. Jasson Dominguez's sac fly scored Witt to tie the game at 1 and in the 6th Knight walked two men in front of Rodolfo Rivas, who hit an opposite-field homer just inside the RF foul pole to make it 4-1 Rays. But Blake Money, who had been pitching well through 5, got into trouble, allowing a run and leaving two on with nobody out. Corbin Martin came in and was great, striking out 3 in the inning but the third one came on a wild pitch and the White Sox got another run to make it 4-3. And Evan Godwin, normally homer-prone but yet to allow one this season, regressed to the mean by allowing Collin Montez's 2nd of the game to tie the score in the 7th (there was no way we were getting through a White Sox series without Montez homering against us). But in the 8th Ricky Widmar extended his own hitting streak to 11 with a single, stole second, and then scored on a Dayle Jenkins homer, the 3rd of the year for the second-year man who had gotten off to a quiet start. Rivas then followed two batters later with his second dinger of the game to make it 7-4, doubling his total for the year coming in, and the rally continued with a 2-run single from Dominguez. Jordan Diaz took over in the 8th and loaded the bases for lefty slugger AJ Austin, so Jose Alvarado came in and whiffed him. To save Alvarado with a 5-run lead in the 9th, Mike Mooney came on and struck out the side to end the game.
Game 4: Don't think anybody had Christian Little giving up 8 runs on 3 HRs in 4 1/3 innings on their bingo card, but that's what happened in an 8-5 loss to the White Sox, making the Rays a mediocre 5-7 on the road this season. Little gave up a 3-run HR to Collin Montez in the first inning (of course) after walking a man and hitting another, and then served up a grand slam to Arturo Jimenez in the 2nd before yielding another one to Jimenez in the 5th. David Saldana and Corbin Martin combined to mop up the final 3 2/3 but after coming back in the middle innings the bats ran out of gas in the final 3. Both Ricky Widmar (who took a 9th-inning walk in his last chance) and Bobby Witt Jr failed to keep their hitting streaks alive. Most of the offense came from Nate Clark, who provided a 2-run double and a sac fly. Isaac DeLeon had an RBI double but foolishly got himself thrown out at 3rd when it was 7-0, and Jasson Dominguez hit his first HR in a while (#5) in the 6th to give us the final scoreline.
Team record: 18-8. Next up: The road trip continues with 3 in Boston.