Rays rally past Red Sox for historic 13th straight win to open season
ST. PETERSBURG — Watching starting pitcher Jeffrey Springs walk off the mound with a trainer in the fourth inning, designated hitter Harold Ramirez thought Thursday might not be the Rays’ day. Reliever Kevin Kelly had to push the thought out of his mind that this time the team might not be able to turn things around.
“I looked around, and everybody’s face looked like we had just lost,” Ramirez said of Springs’ departure in the fourth inning. “But I think to myself, we still have a lot of game left, and I said, ‘We can come back.’”
An inning later, Ramirez started and ended a seven-run rally with a pair of doubles as the Rays came from behind to beat the Red Sox 9-3 and match Major League Baseball’s modern-era record of 13 straight wins to start the season.
A crowd of 21,175 at Tropicana Field got to see the Rays become just the third team since 1901 and first since the 1987 Brewers to start a season 13-0. The 1982 Braves also did it.
“Pretty, pretty amazing,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “Congrats to all of our guys. And I’m glad that we did it at home, because we had tremendous fan support throughout this entire homestand. No doubt, when you do something like that you’re playing really well and there’s not one part of our game right now that we don’t feel good about.”
Only the 1884 St. Louis Maroons had more consecutive wins (20) to start a season. As they head to Toronto for a weekend series against the Blue Jays, the Rays still have a shot at that record.
“I think it kind of puts a little more spark in our system ... Nobody likes a tie,” second baseman Brandon Lowe said. “It’s not lost on anybody. We know what’s going on here. We understand the severity of everything and how fun it’s been‚ but also we are not worried about the next day.”
Heading into the bottom of the fifth, the Rays had more than enough to worry about with just the Red Sox.
Springs left an inning earlier with what the team called left elbow neuritis, and the Red Sox had taken a 3-1 lead with the help of a missed pop-up and a double-play Tampa Bay could not turn.
Ramirez went to the plate to lead off the fifth with just a hope of getting on base.
“Harold battling through that at-bat to come away with the double really sparked the lineup right there,” said Brandon Lowe, who hit his fifth home run in six games in the seventh inning. “I feel like once you get one little spark to this lineup, there is no looking back.”
The Rays used everything they could in the half-inning. Josh Lowe walked, and Francisco Mejia, Brandon Lowe and Randy Arozarena singled in runs. Wander Franco got hit by a pitch, and then Manuel Margot laid down a pinch-hit, bases-loaded bunt.
“I noticed their third baseman playing back, and B-Lowe runs well, so I knew if I got the bunt down the line or between them, we had a chance,” Margot said through communications manager Elvis Martinez Guerrero.
The bunt shocked everyone.
“Manny put down a beautiful bunt. ... I think anybody could have scored on it,” Brandon Lowe said. “It’s not what you expect, bases loaded, to see happen. But again, that’s just another thing about this team that Manny didn’t try to go up there and try to hit a grand slam. He understood that, ‘I can do what I can do, let me put this bunt down and see what happens off of that.’
“To have ego completely out of the way and all he was focused on was just a run, it’s a testament to what we’ve been doing all this year so far.”
Ramirez completed the rally with a three-run double in his second at-bat of the inning.
It is not just the offense. The pitching has been on a roll, too.
When Garrett Cleavinger couldn’t get more than an out in relief of Springs, Kevin Kelly came on and got the Rays out of a jam. He allowed one run over 2⅔ innings to pick up his first big-league win. Then Braden Bristo threw three scoreless innings to earn the save in his major-league debut.
Kelly admitted that he was worried in the fourth.
“Especially when you see Jeffrey leaving the game, you think that is the worst thing that could possibly happen to us,” Kelly said. “But guys were also like, ‘OK, we’re keeping it close, and we have time.’
“And then boom, we have that huge inning,” Kelly said with a laugh, “and we just keep going.”
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