Just another wild night at the ballpark as Rays come from behind
Let’s face it, the Rays still have some issues.
Their hitters strike out too much and their pitching staff seems to be held together with Band-Aids. The bullpen has blown some leads and the roster and lineup changes — literally — from day to day.
But danged if this isn’t one of the more entertaining teams in the American League. And, after an 8-3 victory and a four-game sweep of the Angels on Thursday night, the Rays’ record says they are one of the better teams in the league, too.
Since finding themselves in last place in the AL East on Sunday morning, the Rays have ripped off five consecutive victories and are now in second place, 1.5 games behind the Red Sox.
Are they conventional? Not entirely. But are they effective? They certainly were Thursday night.
While the Rays may lack the star quality of Anaheim’s lineup with Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, they’re a more disciplined and energetic group. They used their speed to pressure Anaheim’s shaky defense, and then watched as the Angels bullpen imploded.
Trailing 3-0 going into the seventh, the Rays finally shook out of their offensive slumber with a Mike Zunino two-out homer to leftfield. That was just a prelude to a wild eighth inning that saw 12 batters come to the plate, a double steal, a wild pitch, two walks, seven hits and seven runs.
The biggest moment was after Randy Arozarena and Manuel Margot had back-to-back RBI hits to the opposite field to tie the score. With Austin Meadows on first and Margot on second, the Rays attempted a double steal. Angels reliever Aaron Slegers threw a wild pitch and Margot came all the way around to score the go-ahead run.
From there, the Angels fell apart. Yandy Diaz singled over a drawn-in infield to drive in Meadows, Zunino got an RBI single and Brett Phillips, who was making a rare start in place of Kevin Kiermaier in centerfield and started the rally with a single to open the eighth, doubled in the final two runs.
The pitching wasn’t as sharp as earlier in the series but, for the 11th time in the past 13 games, the Rays held an opponent to three runs or fewer.
For the second outing in a row, left-hander Josh Fleming struggled out of the gate. Working as a starter against the Astros on May 1, he gave up three runs on three hits and two walks in the first inning.
This time, Fleming followed Collin McHugh as the bulk guy out of the bullpen in the third inning, but the results were the same. He surrendered four consecutive hits, including a two-run homer by Ohtani as Anaheim went up 3-0.
But, to his credit, the Rays rookie has kept his composure. Just like the Astros game when he settled down to throw five shutout innings, Fleming gutted it out against the Angels with four innings of two-hit shutout ball. With the victory, Fleming is now 7-3 in his young career.
The only thing Tampa Bay’s offense did right, meanwhile, in the early going was to force Andrew Heaney to throw a lot of pitches.
Heaney, who had a 4.79 ERA the past three seasons, shut the Rays down with 10 strikeouts and no runs through the first six innings. After getting two outs in the seventh, Heaney had thrown a season-high 110 pitches and manager Joe Maddon came out to get him.
That was all the Rays needed.
Four pitches later, Zunino hit a Mike Mayers fastball 412 feet to put the Rays on the board and set up the big eighth inning.
John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com. Follow @romano_tbtimes.
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