Your opening day box:
The Rays reunited with an old friend and treated him rudely as Sung-min Yang's 3-run homer in the 8th off former Tampa Bay reliever Chris Hetzel gave them a 5-2 Opening Day win at Publix Park. And one of Hetzels' bullpen replacements, Adan Guardado, pitched 2 scoreless innings for the win. Otherwise it was a typical Dave Rose start, great except for a solo homer or two, and Jesus Avalos started his MVP defense with an RBI double.
Game 2: Tampa Bay bats were held in check as the Rays lost for the first time in 2055 2-1 to Baltimore. Manny Cervantes was impressive at 6 5 1 1 1 3 but a key Luis Barela error led to an unearned run for the Orioles in the 8th off Chris Resnick (0-1) that proved to be the winner. The lone Rays run came on Jesus Avalos' 1st homer of the year in the 3rd.
Game 3: The Rays rediscovered their bats in an 8-5 win over the Orioles, scoring 4 times in the 4th and 5th to account for their scoring. And in both of those innings David Morales drilled 2-run doubles while the other four came on 2-run hits, an Ezequiel Avalos double and a Jose Machado single. Brad Villarreal (1-0) was in fine form at 7 7 2 2 1 6 and Julio Mattila's MLB debut saw him breeze through the 8th but load the bases after allowing a run to start the 9th, necessitating Mario Berumen to come on and get the save despite allowing 2 of Mattila's men to score.
Game 4: Tampa Bay took the series from Baltimore with another patented Publix Park comeback, erasing a 5-0 lead in the 6th to prevail 6-5. David Morales continued to be an RBI machine, following up his earlier RBI triple with an RBI single in the 8th off former teammate Chris Hetzel, who took the loss just as he did on Opening Day. Jose Lozada also had a 2-run double in a 5-run 6th that immediately wiped out the Oriole lead after they roughed up Randy Mastropietro (5.2 8 5 5 2 3). And also just like Opening Day, Adan Guardado went two innings for the win, this time staying on for the 9th with a pair of lefty hitters due up.
Team record: 3-1. Well we're already off to a rerun of last season as while the Rays' 3-1 start is impressive, the Yankees went 4-0 against Toronto to begin the year so we're behind them yet again. Next up: Cleveland visits for 3 games.
We also made a trade to free up some money, although we might have hurt ourselves for 2056:
Ben Hilton had a tremendous 2054, earning 4.1 WAR before blowing out his elbow late in the season and undergoing Tommy John surgery. He is out for all of this season, and we were paying him $7.3M but had him under contract for next year. So while he was useless to us now we're missing out on a great pitcher next year provided he makes a full recovery (not a sure thing). In return we get an interesting reliever in Sanchez who has blazing 80 stuff and wicked 65 movement but abysmal 35 control. The move did enable us to send Brandon Birth, who really didn't belong on an MLB roster, back to Durham, and as you can see above we're now $3.3M in the black. It's not going to buy us a lot but if a useful low-salaried reliever pops up on waivers we can afford him now.