Game 1: Victor de Jesus sure has a flair for the dramatic, as he came up in the top of the 9th inning with the game tied, two men on and his 28-game hitting streak on the line after going 0-4. He took care of both with one swing of the bat as his 3-run homer to deep center (#3) gave the Rays a 7-4 win and de Jesus a 29-game hitting streak, the longest in club history. We got to that point as Nate Thompson squandered an early 3-0 lead and the Rays had to come back just to tie it in the 6th on Luis Corpus's 2nd RBI single of the day. Thompson went 5.1 10 4 4 1 4 and needed Danny Medina to get him out of trouble in the 6th to prevent further damage. Medina pitched through the 7th, Mike Wherry got two outs in the 8th before giving way to Tim Siqueiros, who ended up with the win. Siqueiros wasn't sharp, walking a man in the 8th and then after he was given a chance to finish it, put two more on with a single and a walk with one out so Kikuo Kawase came in and struck out the two men he faced for save #4. Earlier the Rays had built a 3-0 lead on a Dayle Jenkins RBI double in the 1st and a Danny Ayala RBI triple in the 2nd followed by the first Corpus RBI single.
Game 2: The Rays made it 4 straight wins today with Victor de Jesus, Danny Ayala and Andy Aparicio leading the way in a 10-1 rout of the White Sox. Ayala got things going for the Rays in the 3rd with a grand slam, his first homer since the second game of the season and his 3rd of the year. de Jesus, who had already extended his hitting streak to 30 games with a first-inning single, drilled a 2-run homer in the 5th to make it 6-0, and Ayala and de Jesus each went deep again with the former hitting a solo homer in the 8th and the latter launching another 2-run shot in the 9th to give him 5 HR and 14 RBI through the season's first 11 games. Ayala now has 4 homers, and they've come in 2 games. Aparicio was stifling the White Sox offense while all this was going on, going 8 4 1 1 0 5 on 103 pitches to improve to 2-1, 2.70, only losing his shutout in the 8th on a Kyle Teel homer. Bob Sirna pitched an uncharacteristically efficient 9th inning, getting three groundballs on 6 pitches.
Game 3: A bad day all around for the Rays as they were whupped 10-3 by the White Sox and Victor de Jesus saw his 30-game hitting streak come to an end when Chicago CF Dasan Brown made a diving catch of his liner to end the game. While last year's Nate Schultz-for-Connor Kirkley trade clearly benefited the Rays, opening up 2B full-time for Jaiden Hardaway to have an MVP season while Schultz won 22 games plus 3 more in a postseason championship run, today the trade winners were the White Sox. Schultz was back on his old mound but he was terrible, tagged for a 2.2 9 8 8 1 4 line. This marked the second disaster start for Schultz in 3 this season after giving up 7 to Boston in his first start of the year. He should still be OK, he has a 2/16 BB/K ratio in 14 innings despite a 10.93 ERA. Allowing 4 homers in those innings doesn't help nor does a BABIP of .422. Anyway the main man doing the damage against Schultz was none other than Kirkley, who hit a 3-run homer off him in the first and drove in 5 runs on the day. Kevin Kerstetter went 2 1/3 in relief without a run charged to him, but when he came in he walked two straight men to force in one of Schultz's runners. Bob Sirna wasn't good at all, walking 3 and giving up 2 runs in 1 2/3 while Edgar Rios stayed unscored upon as a Ray with 1 1/3 pitched. A Will Quintana RBI single and Omar Rodriguez's 3rd homer of the year with a man on accounted for the Tampa Bay scoring.
Team record: 8-4. Next up: An off-day, then the Philadelphia Phillies visit Publix Park for the first time.