The Skinny: The Rays have kept up their hot streak as they took two straight close ball games from the defending champion Boston Red Sox. The Rays won a close on in extra innings on Friday 5-4 and won in 9 innings on Saturday in pitchers duel 2-1. The Rays have now won five straight games and are 13-11 on the season.
The Pitching: Since the Rays are taking on the highest scoring team in the AL, their pitching needs to be at it’s best, and it has. On Friday Matt Garza started for the Rays and kept the Sox in check by allowing three runs over five innings. The bullpen then went the final six innings of the game and allowed only one run to the very powerful Red Sox line up. Scott Dohmann got the win as he got the final two outs for the Rays in the top of the 11th inning. On Saturday night Edwin Jackson looked to get back on track against Boston. Jackson threw seven innings of impressive baseball allowing only one run and striking out four hitters. Scott Dohmann got one out in this game to pick up the win (that’s a total of 1 inning for two wins for him). Troy Percival threw a perfect 9th to pick up save number five on the season.
The Hitting: Carl Crawford went 3-6 on Friday as he continued to swing a red hot bat and raised his average to .314 for the year. The Rays were patient at the plate as a club as they collected eight walks total in the game (Tim Wakefield was responsible for five of them). With the game tied at 4 in the bottom of the 11th inning, Nathan Haynes hit an RBI single that scored Carl Crawford and won the game for the Rays. The game winning hit came off of Mike Timlin. On Saturday night the Rays hitters were baffled by Clay Buchholz for most of the game. Through seven innings tonight the Rays only had one hit off of the young pitcher and no runs. However, Dioner Navarro singled in the 8th and Akinori Iwamura drove him home with a two run homer to put the Rays up for good at 2-1.
What’s Next?: The Rays will look to sweep the Red Sox tomorrow behind the arm of James Shields. The Rays hitters will have their work cut out for them as they will face Josh Beckett of the Red Sox. Game time is 1:40pm.
