Game 1: Greg Bookhart was dazzling and he and the Rays shut out Boston 6-0 in their opener at Fenway Park. Bookhart went to an eye-popping 15-1 thanks to a 6 2 0 0 2 8 outing and Caleb Ramos hurled 3 hitless innings for his first save of the year. Mario Saro had a double and a 2-run homer (#14) while Seth Williams was 4-5 with an RBI double to lead the offense.
Game 2: The Rays rolled to another win, beating Boston 7-2. Kevin Crater had a 3-run 1st-inning homer (#26) and Jose Castillo found the seats with a man on for his 20th. Ben Moses did his usual hit-scattering thing at 5 8 2 2 0 4 to improve to 9-3.
Game 3: Boston salvaged the series finale, edging the Rays 6-5 in 10 innings. Bob Riley's struggled a bit of late and he was 5 8 5 5 2 4. The pen held the game at 5-5 until the 10th when Satoshi Sato's lousy season continued when he allowed the walk-off winner, giving him 6 losses this year to go with 6 blown saves. Luis Barela hit #28 among his 3 hits and Nelson Bocardo stayed atop the batting average charts by going 3-5 with a double, triple and RBI.
Team record: 81-29. Next up: A rare Friday off-day then we host Columbus for 2 games.
Well we did make a trade for a starting pitcher at the deadline after all:
Delgado is a solid #3/4 starter who has 55 stuff, 65 movement and 65 control and was 8-8, 3.42 for the Jays with 1.9 WAR after a 13-10, 3.77 season good for 4.1 WAR last year. He beat us his last time out for Toronto with 8 1/3 innings of 2-run ball. The Dave Rose starting experiment is over, he'll move to long relief and Micah Crickenberger was DFA'd to make room for Delgado. As for what we gave up, Krisik was one of our better pitching prospects and was up briefly earlier this season, but his 40 control was always going to be a problem and now it's Toronto's. Cardenas' ceiling is a spot starter/swingman.
Some monthly awards:
Vinny is having quite a year at Durham as that final line in the blurb indicates, and of course he was up last September with us. With Seth Williams set for free agency the 1B job will be open and Vinny could factor in (other internal options include sliding Tomas Laboy or Juan Davila over).