Spring Showers, Rays Late Blooming Flowers: Rays 8, Pirates 7

The Rays had their chance to get to Skenes in the second inning, but things materialized that inning in the most improbable way leading to the club not scoring depsite having bases loaded and nobody out. The inning opened with Jake Fraley singling to right field, which was followed up with a catcher’s interference play when Henry Davis impeded the swing of Cedric Mullins, who still hit a hanging change-up to the warning track. One could argue that batted ball would have led to a home run had the swing not been disrupted by the contact. Richie Palacios followed that nonsense up with a nice piece of hitting to load the bases with nobody out, but the inning quickly went downhill from there.

Hunter Feduccia hit a weak groundball to the right side and it was ruled Palacios interfered with Spencer Horwitz’s ability to field the baseball with a backwards motion. Taylor Walls followed that up by taking strike three at the knees and then losing the first challenge for that team refusing to believe the pitch was a strike. Chandler Simpson, who desperately needs a day off, grounded weakly to first base to end the frame.

The aforementioned combo meal of the walk to O’Hearn followed by the Ozuna home run put Pittsburgh up a comfortable four runs as Paul Skenes settled in to strike out four of the next six batters after the sloppy second inning. Mother Nature intervened and did not allow Skenes to earn a win on his bobblehead day as high winds and rain showed up with one out in the bottom of the fourth leading to a two hour and 27 minute rain delay that chased both starters.

Mason Englert came in to finish off the fourth he inherited from Rasmussen without allowing any runs to score. This would be a theme for the next few innings as Ian Seymour and Hunter Bigge would follow Englert scattering two hits and stranding both. Kevin Cash made the decision to use Bryan Baker in the 8th deciding that moment was the game with the game. Lowe drew a walk, and Baker nearly pitched his way out of it but did not get a strike three call to Nick Yorke that was given to several Pirate pitchers in this game, and Yorke knocked in Lowe as the tying run with a single to right field.

Neither team did anything in the 9th pushing the elongated game to extras with an equally speedy Yandy Diaz and Oneil Cruz serving as the Manfred Men for the extra frames. Jonny DeLuca made more excellent contact with a tractor beam ball to Brian Cook in left field before Cedric Mullins popped out to shortstop in an at-bat where he appeared to have forgotten the Rays were granted an extra inning challenge. A terrible 2-1 fastball was called a strike and Mullins did not challenge it in time and the at bat went on:

Diaz never moved off second base making things easier on Pittsburgh in the bottom of the frame. Cole Sulser pitched to Brandon Lowe rather than walk him to set up a double play, and Lowe was able to move Cruz up to third with a flyball to Simpson that Cruz aggressively tagged up on recognizing Simpson’s throwing limitations and the move paid off. Simpson did not help matters by both briefly looking at second base but also making an off-line throw to third when a better located throw would likely have nabbed Cruz. Reynolds was eventually sent to first to set up the double play, while Derek Shelton brought in formmer Ray Jake Mangum while Cash countered with Kevin Kelly.

Mangum was walked to load the bases for Ozuna in hopes the slugger would either strike out or ground into an inning-ending double play, and while Kelly nearly hit Ozuna to end the game with a walkoff hit-by-pitch, he did strike him out with a beautful sinker away which was upheld by ABS. Kelly then continued his excellent pitching of late completing his Houdini act striking out Yorke to strand the bases loaded and push the game to the 11th.

This time, the Manfred Man at least got off second with an aggressive move to third on a groundball by Fortes to Konnor Griffin who opted to throw out Fortes, but Williamson’s fortunes were shortlived as a bad bunt by Walls went right back to Yohan Ramirez who then lobbed the ball to Henry Davis well in advance of Williamson making it near home on the contact play. That misfortune quickly went the other direction as the Pirates turned a pickoff attempt of Walls into a three-base error allowing Walls to come around to score all the way from first base.

Kelly came back out to work the 11th after throwing just 12 pitches in the previous inning hoping to strand Yorke on the bases and end the game which started six hours earlier. That did not happen as the contact play worked for Pittsburgh with just weak enough contact by Griffin to the right side allowing Yorke to slide home ahead of the tag and throw attempt. The game that refused to end went into the 12th when Kelly induced a double play to end the 11th.

The Rays returned the favor by grounding into a double play to end the top of the 12th as the rainshowers returned. Griffin Jax came onto pitch the 12th as the last remaining option in the pen assuming Yoendrys Gomez was unavailable after his 44-pitch outing last night. Jax rebounded from yesterday’s appearance against Oneil Cruz to strike him out. Jax doubled down on his success inducing an at-em ball by Lowe to Walls before intentionally walking Bryan Reynolds before striking out Mangum to end the 12th. Given all that Jax has gone through lately, his work in the 12th was impressive and perhaps the first step in his rebound that Ben Whitelaw wrote about earlier today.

The 13th led off with a bang as karma decided Mullins deserved the home run stolen from him by catcher’s interference in the second inning with a loud homer into the right field bleachers to finally get a two-run lead in the game. This was huge since it was unclear who was going to pitch the bottom of the inning. Jax only threw 13 pitches in the 12th, but this was his third consecutive appearance as well. The inning ended with more madness as Simpson was called out for the Rays’ second runner interference call of the game as the umpires determined he interfered with Griffin’s ability to turn a double-play despite the fact Griffin was the initiator of the contact well wide of the bag (Pardon the typo in the post):

All’s well that ends well as Gomez came worked around some issues in the 13th to strike out Joey Bart and save the game before it reached its seventh hour. The rubber match is tomorrow with Shane McClanahan facing off against Mitch Keller as both teams desperately need some length from both guys with the bullpens being extremely tired and, in some cases, overworked relievers.