The Tampa Bay Rays continued to dominate their trip to the west coast with a 10-4 victory over the San Diego Padres. With the win, the Rays are now 20 games over .500 with a record of 70-50.
SAN DIEGO, CA — The Rays came into the perfect weather of San Diego coming off of a clean sweep of the Seattle Mariners.
The streak was set to continue tonight.
The scoring started early for the Rays as Avisail Garcia took a Joey Lucchesi breaking ball 388 feet over the left field fence to give the Rays a 2-0 lead in the first inning. The home run was Garcia’s 17th of the season. He also racked up three hits, including the homer, which tied a season high.
After Diego Castillo allowed one run in his lone inning of work, Austin Pruitt came in for the bulk of the workload tossing four plus innings of one run ball.
“I thought he did a good job,” manager Kevin Cash said when asked about Pruitt’s outing. “He competed well for us. We tacked on pitches to him. He hasn’t been built up to that degree yet, but he certainly made big pitches for us. [He] pitched out of some jams early on. A couple of lead off guys got on, but he trusted his stuff and made big pitches.”
Pruitt ended his day with four strike outs in his four plus innings. Tonight marked the third time this season he has pitched four plus innings in an outing.
Duffy’s Dominance
Matt Duffy continued the scoring with an RBI single in the third inning – giving the Rays a 3-2 lead. That single was the first of four on the night. Duffy ended his evening going four-for-four with three RBI. He also drew a walk in the game.
The four hits tied a career high, which he’s done four times now (last time was in Boston, April 28, 2018). The four hit night raised his average from .245 (13-53) coming into the game to .298 (17-57).
Late inning scoring
They did it again, scoring seven runs combined in the seventh and eighth innings. According to Team Rankings, the Rays rank seventh in baseball in late inning runs (7th-9th inning) with 1.63 runs per game in those innings.
KK doing KK things
Us: Ah dang, looks like it'll be a 10-3 game.@KKiermaier39: NOPE pic.twitter.com/18kjU0W6XE
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) August 13, 2019
He’s incredible. How about that for analysis?
Rays 2020 schedule
Today Major League Baseball announced the schedule for the 2020 campaign.
The Rays will open the season at home for the 11th straight year. This will be, however, the first time they’ll be facing a National League opponent on Opening Day when they host the Pittsburgh Pirates. Opening Day is Thursday March 26th, the earliest it has ever been for the Rays.
This will mark the eighth straight season that the Rays will have 20 interleague games. They continue the home-and-home series with the Miami Marlins in addition to playing each of the teams in the National League Central.
- They Rays will host:
Pittsburgh Pirates (March 26-29)
Milwaukee Brewers (May 30-31)
St. Louis Cardinals (July 10-12)
Miami Marlins (July 28-29)
The Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds are road series only.
Up Next
Game two of the series features Brendan McKay (2-2; 4.55) taking on Eric Lauer (6-8; 4.51). This is be McKay’s first major league game where he’ll pitch and hit. First pitch is scheduled for 10:10pm EST in lovely San Diego.
