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Game Notes: 301st time facing Baltimore

The Rays are now 150-150 all-time against the Orioles

By Adam Sanford
Brian Blanco/Getty Images

Last night was the Rays 300th time facing the Baltimore Orioles and after a victory they are now evened up having each won 150 games. Tonight they'll send ace Chris Archer to the mound to face off against Miguel Gonzalez. After a shaky start on opening day, Archer has been one of baseball's top pitchers, having not allowed an earned run since that opening day start.

Since his start on opening day, Archer has made four starts and has gone 26.2 innings. During that time on the mound, Archer has allowed 12 hits, 1 run, walked 5, and struck out 32. His opponent is Miguel Gonzalez who started with two solid starts, followed by two lower quality starts.

Here's how both teams will lineup, with Desmond Jennings returning after missing 5 games. He'll serve as the DH.

Gonzalez has four pitches (fastball, sinker, curve, splitter, and a slider) that he uses. His fastball and sinker both come in at the low 90's, while his splitter and slider come in the mid-80's, and his curve tops out at the high-70's. So far this year, Gonzalez has favored his fastball, throwing it 44% of the time. He does a decent job of mixing his other pitches though as he uses his slider 16%, splitter 16%, sinker 12%, and curve 12% of the time.

He'll use his fastball anywhere in the zone against lefties while strictly keeping to the outer edge of the plate to righties. With his slider, he'll sweep it across the zone to righties and will try to backdoor it to lefties. He'll tries to keep his curve low and away from lefties, while using it sporadically against righties. With his final pitch, the splitter, he just uses that to drop out of the bottom of the zone against any batter.

Gonzalez

Other Rays News:

You can add another player to the team's disabled list, as Jose Dominguez is now on the shelf. Don't know if this has anything to do with it, but he was throwing noticeably slower than his 100 mph billing during his time in the bullpen.

After being unceremoniously DFA'd and eventually released last week, Grant Balfour has rejoined the team on a minor league deal. He'll report to Triple-A Durham.

Once again, the Rays are rumored to be among the teams interested in Boston's former catcher, Jarod Saltakamehameha.

The Rays minor league teams have been very good

Three Rays minor leaguers have been named to BA's all-prospect team for the month of April; Brent Honeywell, Tyler Goeddel, and Blake Snell represent the team.

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