NOTES: Victor de Jesus won AL Player of the Week for his 6-HR performance, shocking nobody. Also Jon Jimenez continues to rake at Durham and won the IL Player of the Week. And I'm still surprised we got July 4 off, while Mike Trout played and hit #714 to tie Babe Ruth for 3rd on the all-time homer list. A look at his career stats:
Game 1: Nate Schultz returned to the city in which he plied his trade for the previous five seasons (albeit for the crosstown team) and reminded Chicago-area fans of what they're missing with an excellent 6 4 1 1 1 9 performance to go to 11-0 in a 6-2 Rays win. 6-2 looks like a comfortable scoreline but 3 of those came in the 9th and the offense was limited to 3 hits through 8 innings. Fortunately they made those 3 hits count, with Bo Angeac drilling a 2-run homer (#24) in the 4th to put the Rays up 2-1, and Jaiden Hardaway tripled in the 5th and scored on a wild pitch. Tim Siqueiros took over the 7th and had a rare misstep, giving up a solo HR to former Ray Rafael Devers to cut the lead to 3-2, and Kikuo Kawase did his thing in the 8th, striking out the side. The Cubs brought in their closer Steve Braddock in the 9th but as so often happens the closer struggles in a non-save situation and he put two on ahead of Alex Buitrago, who lofted one into the RF seats for #13 and doubled the Rays' run total. Mike Wherry had a 1-2-3 9th to end it.
Game 2: The Rays have never been no-hit in the 13 1/2 seasons of this save, but they came pretty close today as Chicago's Chris Pendergrast and two relievers one-hit them in a 4-0 shutout loss. Their lone hit came in the 7th inning when with two out Victor de Jesus poked an opposite-field single to right to break up the no-hitter and Pendergrast was immediately relieved after that. It wasn't as if the Rays were being blown away as they only whiffed 4 times (of course 2 of those were Rodolfo Rivas) but there was a lot of weak contact. The Cubs weren't making weak contact in the 4th against Jon Soranno as they scored all their runs in that inning starting with a homer from former Ray Luis Berdin and continuing with a rally that saw 3 more runs scored. Soranno was brilliant in the other 5 innings he pitched for what it's worth, and he finished 6 6 4 4 2 8 in taking his first loss of the season, dropping to 11-1. Bob Sirna went the final two scoreless with his usual 2 walks and 4 Ks.
Team record: 68-18. Next up: Back home for 4 vs Boston before we hit the All-Star break.