Game 1: After a game in St. Pete yesterday and having to fly cross-country, the Rays bats showed serious signs of jet lag as they were shut out on 4 hits by Oakland's Trent Thornton in a 2-0 loss. Blake Money got his second start as a Ray and it went much better than his debut disaster as he went 6 5 1 0 1 4 with the lone run against him scoring on a Triston Casas throwing error. Mike Bayley put a man on in the 8th and Steven Casey gave up a double allowing him to score but that one run was all Oakland needed as Thornton went 9 4 0 0 0 5 on 107 pitches and two of those hits were erased on double plays. The Yankees got back in the win column so the Rays slip a 1/2 game back.
Game 2: After being shut out last night (and in Mack Anglin's last start, and in 3 of the last 6 games) the Rays busted out early scoring 4 times in the first on the way to a 7-1 win over Oakland. Vidal Brujan and Wander Franco led off with doubles for a run, Spencer Torkelson singled in Wander, and Hunter Bishop hit HR #7 with Tork aboard. Brujan scored on a wild pitch in the 2nd, he then doubled home Keibert Ruiz in the 5th, and Ruiz hit HR #4, a solo shot in the 8th for the rest of the scoring. Anglin was great again going 8 3 1 1 2 5 on 108 pitches; he's now 3-1, 2.49. Asa Lacy pitched a scoreless 9th. Good news from Toronto as well as the Jays stomped the Yankees restoring the Rays to 1st.
From the farm:
We need to talk about Nate Clark. Picked up in a minor league deal from the Yankees last season, he's gone nuts since then and has elevated himself to the #23 prospect in baseball per BNN. He's 25 and ready for MLB right now - the editor shows him as a 300/376/567 hitter (and based on his potential ratings he could get even better) and he's clearly overqualified for AAA. Obviously there's no spot for him in the lineup at the moment - as poorly as Judson Fabian has gone this year, his first 2 seasons say more about him than the first 5 weeks. But Clark could serve as a Wander replacement in this sense: I shopped Fabian to see what I could get and popping up on the list was Austin Martin, Detroit's excellent SS who's under contract for 3 more seasons at a reasonable salary (11/15.4/15.4) after this one and perhaps I could get them to retain some. We'll also of course see how Ricky Widmar develops at AA Montgomery - so far, so good there too. Here's a look under the hood at Clark, there's nothing not to like except his mediocre rating in LF (he could always DH as Tork is a 60 in LF):
An oddity I just noticed: We have 23 wins but only 4 saves. Most of the wins obviously have been comfortable, and the team has only played 6 one-run games out of 34, going 4-2 (which I imagine are the 4 saves). Also the top 4 starting pitchers each have 1.2 WAR, and all have ERAs between 2.49 and 2.86.
Game 3: For 7 innings this was looking like it would be a "famine" game among the team's recent feast-or-famine performances offensively as they trailed 3-1. But a 6-run explosion with nobody out in the 8th gave them a 7-3 win, and with Nate Pearson rolling back the clock for the Blue Jays and shutting out the Yankees, they move to 1 1/2 games on top in the AL East. Christian Little started and went 6 5 3 3 3 9, running into some trouble in the middle innings including yielding a Tyler Nevin homer. And through 7 all the Rays could scratch out was a run in the 5th on Brandon Marsh's infield single after Hunter Bishop hit his 2nd double of the game. But they loaded the bases in the 8th against Zac Grotz and Simon Rosenblum-Larson, and SRL gave up RBI singles to Wander Franco and Yordan Alvarez to tie the game. And up stepped Judson Fabian still looking for his 1st HR of the year as the calendar turned to May, and he hit it, a grand slam to make it 7-3. If SRL's name sounds vaguely familiar it's because he was a former Ray farmhand sent to the Cubs in a 2021 deadline deal for Kyle Schwarber. He finally made the majors this year with Oakland and obviously had a rough time of it today. Liam Hendriks picked up the win having pitched a 1-2-3 7th, and Jose Alvarado and Jack Filby pitched a scoreless 8th and 9th as we get another win without a save.
Game 4: No waiting until late today as the Rays scored 6 times in the first two innings on the way to a comfortable second-straight 7-3 win over Oakland. The big early hit was a bases-clearing triple from Hunter Bishop in the first inning after Judson Fabian put the Rays on the board with a sac fly. Spencer Torkelson's 2-RBI single in the 2nd made it 6-0 and Wander Franco had an RBI groundout in the 6th. Yordan Alvarez was 3-5 with a pair of doubles; he's still stuck on 2 HR but he's been hitting lately. Shane McClanahan (5-2, 2.68) was in charge with the brief exception of a couple of runs allowed in the 5th, going 8 5 2 2 1 7 on 99 pitches. Hayden Johns made a bit of a mess in the 9th, allowing a run and leaving two on, so Jose Alvarado came into what was technically a save situation and whiffed former teammate Chris Betts to end the game and get his 3rd save of the year and only the team's 5th. The Jays completed their sweep of the Yankees so the Rays have their biggest division lead of the season at 2 1/2 games.
Team record: 25-11. Next up: An off-day followed by 3 in Chicago against the White Sox.