[Art Deco]

Game 1: Christian Little was channeling Johnny Vander Meer into the 5th inning today as he was following up his no-hitter against Boston with one against Baltimore through 4 2/3 innings before Matt Olson singled. That would be the only hit Little gave up as he continued on his dominant roll by going 6 1 0 0 2 15 in a 5-0 win to improve to 14-2, 3.36. The 31 strikeouts in his last 15 innings give him 256 this year in 158 innings, and leave him one off the MLB lead behind teammate Marc Wagner and Texas's Wil Diaz. Andy Aparicio pitched three hitless innings (for save #6) with four whiffs of his own to finish the combined 1-hitter and the team's second shutout in as many days. If you gave Little and Aparicio's combined 9 1 0 0 2 19 performance a game score, it would be the same as Little's 102 in his no-hitter last time out. The Rays picked up their runs early off former teammate Steve Givens, hitting him much harder than last time out. Victor de Jesus kicked things off with a solo homer in the 2nd (#8), and in the 3rd Nate Clark and de Jesus had RBI doubles wrapped around Joe Barker's RBI single. Isaac DeLeon singled in a run in the 5th to finish the scoring. Nick Gordon made his Rays debut as a defensive sub in the 9th and had the first batter hit one at him which he fielded cleanly, only for the second batter to also hit one at him which he booted.

Game 2: Thanks to seven strong innings from Danny Ceja and 2-run HRs from Mike Lammers and Caleb Picciotti, the Durham Bulls won tonight 6-2. Wait, what? Oh, the Rays beat Baltimore 6-2 due primarily to three guys who spent most of their season playing baseball in the International League. Ceja made it two straight winning starts to begin his MLB career as he went 7 7 2 2 2 4. He did it on 94 pitches and I have to say it's almost refreshing to see a Rays starter use his defense behind him and allow the ball in play early in the count. He got a couple of double plays and had a few rough moments but in the end he got the job done just as well as our flamethrowers. Speaking of flamethrowers, Jordan Diaz had a 1-2-3 8th when it was 5-2 and JDLC pitched a scoreless 9th even though a run in the 8th took away the save situation. The offense took a while to get going but Lammers came through big in the 5th, drilling a 2-run HR (#2) to give the Rays a 2-1 lead. And after Baltimore tied it in the top of the 6th, Picciotti answered with his 2nd HR with a man on to make it 4-2. The rookie 1B has impressed since playing every day after his recall, going 300/444/600 with 2 HR, 5 RBI and 6 walks in his 7 games. Another guy with quite a bit of time at Durham over the last two years came through as well with D'Andre Hodges hitting #8 in the 7th and adding an RBI double in the 8th. He's hitting 289/333/633 with 8 HR and 18 RBI in 90 AB this year. Meanwhile "normal" regulars like Dayle Jenkins, Connor Kirkley, Nate Clark and Adley Rustchman combined to go 1 for 15 tonight.

Game 3: The Rays completed the sweep with a fairly easy 8-2 win over Baltimore that saw Alec Sachais improve to 19-3. Sachais was excellent today, retiring the first 12 Orioles before Lewis Brinson homered leading off the 5th, and ended 7 4 2 2 1 10. Corbin Martin and Mike Mooney finished up with scoreless innings. The game was pretty much over in the 2nd when the Rays went up 5-0 (although in his last start Sachais blew a 5-0 lead) with Isaac DeLeon's 15th HR of the year leading off the second one of the big hits, along with Caleb Picciotti's RBI single and Dayle Jenkins' RBI double. Dane Ayers also added an RBI single as part of a 3-4 day (he's hitting .327) and Connor Kirkley had a 2-RBI single as he was on base four times with two walks and two singles. Adley Rustchman continues to struggle, going 0-4 to drop to .223 as a Ray just when it looked like he was starting to heat up, but he did bring in two runs, one by grounding into a double play in the 1st and the other on a sac fly in the 2nd.

Team record: 108-36. Next up: An off-day, then we kick off a road trip in New York to face the Yankees for 3.