I’m completely ecstatic about how well the Rays have been playing lately. The pitching performances have been dominant, the offense has been "swarming", and the Rays just keep winning. Eight in a row. Two straight series sweeps. Three more games left against the Astros before the All-Star Break.
Yesterday we saw Matt Moore get his thirteenth victory of the season and take a no-hitter into the sixth inning. After the game, Moore got the news that he was named to the American League All-Star Team.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Oh yea being named an all-star today felt great too thank you for everyone's love and support! Honored to represent the Rays in the ASG!</p>— Matt Moore (@MattyMoe55) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattyMoe55/statuses/355520864839663618">July 12, 2013</a></blockquote>
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For more on yesterday’s win, check out Danny’s recap here. You can rewatch Luke Scott’s mammoth homerun to the back wall again right here. It’s gotta be the rat-tail, obviously. Evan Longoria followed with a shot of his own to left field.
Parker Hageman of Twinsdaily.com vined this gem of Twins rookie Oswaldo Arcia’s reaction to striking out.
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Tonight, the Rays send David Price to the mound against Houston’s Jarred Cosart, the Astros’ number seven overall prospect who was just promoted to the Majors on Wednesday.
A Quick Look Around the AL East
Boston maintains a three and a half game lead on the division after taking three of four from Seattle. They head to Oakland today to take on the Athletics. Baltimore split their four games series with Texas and fell two games behind us. They will host Blue Jays who are now 11.5 games out of the division race. The Yankees are sitting at 50-42, six games out of first and will host the Twins who are due to bounce back and sweep New York, right?
Links:
-Richie Shaffer had a pretty sad experience during his first trip to Camden Yards to see his childhood idol.
-Apparently Jose Fernandez has a new favorite show as he’s been spending the past five days watching ‘24’. Surely the Marlins wouldn’t send him back to the minors for having Netflix marathons, right?
-Freddie Freeman and Steve Delabar won the All-Star Game "Final Vote" contest and will represent their teams in New York next week. Per @AllStarGame, Freddie Freeman received 19.7 million votes, which is a new record for the Final Vote. That’s incredible considering the top vote-getter in the NL didn’t even receive seven million total votes on the initial ballot.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Molina led all NL players w/ 6,883,258 votes. Wright wound up winning 3B by nearly 2 million votes. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ASG&src=hash">#ASG</a></p>— MLB Public Relations (@MLB_PR) <a href="https://twitter.com/MLB_PR/statuses/353644170935672833">July 6, 2013</a></blockquote>
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Also, this is incredible: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>During the 6 hours in which <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FinalVote&src=hash">#FinalVote</a> tweets counted, 4,200 tweets per minute were recorded, peaking at 24,660 TPM during the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FinalMinute&src=hash">#FinalMinute</a></p>— MLB Social (@MLBsocial) <a href="https://twitter.com/MLBsocial/statuses/355437520537923584">July 11, 2013</a></blockquote>
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The Final Vote tweeting portion occurred during 10 AM- 4 PM, ET yesterday.
-No Rays showed up on the list this week, but who doesn’t enjoy watching terrible swings of other players around the league?
-Speaking of which, this swing by Rajai Davis yesterday will definitely show up on that FanGraphs list next week.
-MLBPA Union Head, Michael Weiner, released a statement yesterday concerning the Biogenesis leaks.
-Bragging Rights: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>The best team in professional baseball? <a href="https://twitter.com/DurhamBulls">@DurhamBulls</a> become first team at any level (<a href="https://twitter.com/MLB">@MLB</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/MiLB">@MiLB</a>) to win 60 games this season.</p>— Durham Bulls (@DurhamBulls) <a href="https://twitter.com/DurhamBulls/statuses/355534980719456256">July 12, 2013</a></blockquote>
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