Rays take Game 2 from Orioles
Photo by Douglas R. Clifford/Times
The Tampa Bay Rays gave the Baltimore Orioles one day of holding sole possession of first place in the AL East division before tying for first after last night’s win. The Rays’ record sits at 61-40 while the Orioles’ sit at 59-38. Granted, there are still two more games left in this four game set so first place can look different after tomorrow night.
The Rays had Zach Eflin start the game against the Orioles’ Kyle Bradish. The Rays signed Eflin this past offseason for 3 years and 40 million dollars, and in his first year with the team Eflin is having himself a career year. With last night’s win Eflin has now tied his career high for wins in a season with 11. He is also chasing his career highs in innings pitched in a season, his high is 128 innings whereas right now he is at 112.1 a bit after the halfway point of the season. Eflin is now only 16 strikeouts away from tying his career high of 129. In last night’s game Eflin would go 7 shutout innings, only giving up 2 hits and a walk, while striking out 8 on 87 pitches. On the season he is 11-5 with a 3.36 ERA and a 0.99 WHIP. After the game Eflin would go on to say, “I felt really good, heading into the game. I felt good in the bullpen and felt like it was going to carry over into the game. CB (Christian Bethancourt) did a great job of leading me tonight, he was all over it, he was sequencing great and really I just followed his lead. The defense played awesome and it was good to get a couple of runs against a really good arm. It was just a fun day at the yard.”
Video by Bally Sports Florida & Bally Sports Sun on YouTube.com
Rays Manager Kevin Cash when asked about Eflin limiting the Orioles to 2 hits said, “That’s a tall order and he did it as about as well as he could, a bunch of switch hitters a bunch of leftys in there…he really did execute, spot on didn’t seem like he missed a location all night long. When you do that with his stuff, you’re gonna give yourself a good chance to have success and that was a big big start for us.”
Eflin had enough run support to help him continue cruising throughout the game. In the second inning, Brandon Lowe hit a double to right field before Harold Ramirez would single up the middle to center field to score Lowe. Later in the sixth inning, Isaac Paredes would hit a solo homerun, his 18th of the season, making the score 2-0. Finally Jose Siri would hit his team-leading 20th homerun of the season making the deciding score 3-0.
Video by MLB on YouTube.com
The third game of the series will be played this afternoon and first pitch is scheduled for 4:10 PM EDT. Grayson Rodriguez of the Orioles will face off against Shane McClanahan of the Rays. Rodriguez is currently 2-2 with a 7.33 ERA while Shane McClanahan is 11-1 with a 2.56 ERA.
