Game 1:
This loss officially ended the Rays' division hopes as the Yankees clinched. To make matters worse Boston won and pulled into a tie with the Rays for WC1, putting who would host up in the air (the Rays hold the tiebreaker).
Game 2:
Uh-oh. After fanning 16 times in the opener and scoring only one run the offense was dominated by Ricky Tiedemann, who came into the game with an ERA pushing 7. And combined with another Boston win the Rays have dropped into WC2 and will be headed to Fenway for the best-of-3 series unless the Rays win tomorrow while the Sox lose.
The Rays will try to thread that needle with
Joe Rock being called up for the spot start as it's not worth using McClanahan or Rasmussen in the finale to try to get home-field advantage and not have them available for the wild card series.
Ryan Pepiot, who also got a spot start in today's game, was optioned to Durham to make room.
Game 3:
Phew! The Rays were scoreboard-watching and saw that Detroit was routing the Red Sox so a win would mean WC1 and hosting the playoff series. And Rock was outstanding in his spot start and left up 3-1 in the 7th only to see
Edwin Uceta, who had been nearly untouchable in the second half of the season, giving up a game-tying 2-run homer to Alejandro Kirk. But a solo homer in the 9th from former Jay
Danny Jansen broke the tie,
Brandon Lowe added another, and Fairbanks closed the door in the 9th to send Boston to the Trop for the wild card series.
The pitching rotation for the series will be McClanahan-Rasmussen-Ober with Baz and Bradley available in relief.
I'll have the final standings, playoff matchups and final regular season Rays stats in the next post.