Welp...
A record 132 wins meant nothing in the end as the Rays bowed out in the ALDS for the third time in five seasons after dropping Game 5 at Publix Park to Boston 6-2. Plenty of blame to go around but Nate Schultz gets a lot of it as for the second time in this series he was rocked by the Red Sox, giving up 5 runs on 3 homers in 4 innings, taking a 1-0 lead and turning it into a 5-1 deficit. Schultz had a shaky postseason last year and followed that up with an even worse one. Blame too for the bats, which scored at a record pace this year but made Mario Candelaria look like John Candelaria, or something. When they needed to come up big, they didn't, scoring a grand total of 5 runs over the final 2 games of this series which they lost. They did make a half-hearted attempt at making it interesting when they loaded the bases with 2 out in the 9th and brought Victor de Jesus up as the tying run, but his lazy fly ball to center was the end of the Rays' season. And although I'm not singling him out - and he did put us on the board with an RBI double in the 1st - somehow Danny Ayala has managed to play 23 postseason games the last two years and not hit a single, solitary homer despite 94 over that same time in the regular season.
But as always, it's the vagaries of a short series and all that so I can't be too hard on them though.
And Boston will be playing...the Texas Rangers in the ALCS, as their ace came through unlike ours:
Will Diaz was magnificent with 8 innings of 3-hit shutout ball and Izaac Pacheco had a huge 2-run homer.