The Rays came away with a very satisfying win tonight. With hits across the lineup (Victor Mesa Jr. led the way with three; defensive gems across the field; and outstanding pitching (minus a few blips), this was a satisfying win.
It sure didn’t seem like we were heading to this outcome at the start of the game. Freddy Peralta, facing his former team, had a shaky first inning. He gave up a lead off home run to Francisco Lindor, and then two singles soon after. Maybe there were some emotions pitching against friends; maybe Mets players just knew what to expect from him. But he got out of the inning having given up just the one run, and then he cruised.
We didn’t have much time to wallow about the deficit, as tied the game. In the bottom of the first, Yandy doubled and then booked it around the bases to score on Junior Caminero’s single. A double play prevented the Rays from scoring further.
View LinkBut Tampa Bay did get the lead in the third inning. Victor Mesa Jr., back from an IL stint, singled and moved to second on a Walls bunt, from where he scored on Ryan Vilade’s single. And they made that score 3-1 in the sixth inning, thanks to Nick Fortes, whose double drove in Simpson from first base.
View LinkFortes advanced to third, at which point the Mets pulled the infield in so close that they could have reached out and touched the batter, Taylor Walls. Walls responded by hitting the ball in the air, and plenty deep, scoring Fortes on the sacrifice.
That brought up Diaz. In the previous at bat, Yandy had hit a deep fly to center — 379 feet to be exact — and after it was caught he stood at the batters box, staring in disbelief. Well he must have had a good think about what went wrong because in the sixth inning he hit the ball almost identically except twenty feet farther, for a solo home run.
View LinkRyan Vilade then followed with a triple (!), which ended Sean Manaea’s night. He had pitched fairly well, but probably should have been pulled before giving Yandy another bite at that apple. At the end of six innings the Rays had a 5-1 lead.
Peralta left the game after the sixth and wow was he good. He pitched a 3-hit no-walker, with seven strikeouts and fourteen (14!) whiffs.
The Rays went with Garrett Cleavinger to pitch the seventh inning. I understand sometimes you need to let guys pitch through their problems but at this point I’d rather drink spoiled milk than watch Cleavinger on the mound. So I can’t even tell you how he managed to load the bases with just one out, but loaded they were. I guess even Kevin Cash was starting to feel queasy, so he brought in Tyler Wells to get out of the jam. Wells got out number two on a pop up to the catcher, but then walked in Mets run number two. A second infield pop up later and the inning was mercifully over.
As my colleague Darby Robinson so aptly puts it: “Every time Cash wants to use Clev he should just use the guy he’s gonna call to to clean up Clev’s mess instead.”
The Rays tacked on one more run: in the bottom of the eight inning, Mesa Jr. singled and Walls doubled to put Mesa Jr. on third base. Vilade hit a come-backer that seemingly bounced off the torso of reliever Yan. By the time Yan got a handle on the ball and tossed to the catcher, Mesa Jr. had scored run number six.
Meanwhile, Tyler Wells and Kevin Kelly treated us to a scoreless eighth and ninth inning, and the Rays were able to close out their eighty-fifth win of the season.
It was great to see the timely hitting tonight, from soft singles to loud home runs. But the Rays defense also deserves star of the game status. Junior Caminero had two very nice plays at third base, and Chandler Simpson ran down a very difficult fly ball in the corner, with other players simply make tough plays look routine.
This was one of those games where you think “yeah, this is a playoff team!” If my math is correct, the magic number to win the division is now 22.
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