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This Date in Team History, of Which They Are 6-6 All-Time
- 1999 - The trio of Wilson Alvarez, Esteban Yan, and Jim Mecir combine to throw the first shutout in franchise history as they blanked the White Sox, only allowing four hits. Timely hitting paved the way for the offense and the Rays took home a 5-0 victory.
- 2000 - The Rays bullpen imploded during this game as the team had built up a 7-1 lead entering the eighth inning in Minnesota, only to see that crumble down. With one out, the Twins had seven consecutive hitters reach base and they scratched across six runs to tie the game. Rick White was brought on to preserve the tie in the ninth, but he surrendered back to back singles to open the frame, then Matt Lawton ended it quickly launching a walk-off three run homer to give the Twins a 10-7 victory.
- 2001 - Chris Carpenter and the Blue Jays dismantle the Rays with both pitching and offense as Carpenter delivered eight shutout innings, allowing just four hit, while his offense put up a double digit run total as Toronto took an 11-0 victory.
- 2002 - The Rays are held to just three hits as they're shutout by the trio of Andy Petite, Steve Karsay, and future Rays reliever, Randy Choate as the Yankees cruised to a 4-0 victory.
- 2003 - With the season less than a week old, the Rays celebrated their second walk-off victory of the home-stand. Entering the bottom of the eighth, they trailed the Yankees, 5-3, however the team would rally for two runs to tie the game. The following inning, against Antonio Osuna, the Rays loaded the bases for Al Martin, who blooped the first pitch he seen into right field for the 6-5 victory.
- 2009 - Faced with the problem of too many starting pitchers, the Rays are forced to trade away former top prospect, Jason Hammel to the Rockies for Aneury Rodriguez.
- 2013 - Matt Moore and a trio of Rays relievers combined to shutout the Indians, as they only allowed two hits and struck out 11 over the course of the nine inning game. Ben Zobrist provided the bulk of the Rays offense as he drilled two doubles en route to the team's 4-0 victory.
Links!
- From Marc Topkin, both Kevin Cash and Drew Smyly were unhappy about the length of the replay that preceded the Saunders home run. Smyly was also unhappy that two lefties hit homers off him.
- Also from Topkin, a reiteration that Jake Odorizzi spent the offseason working on his non-fastball/changeup pitches: "I worked really hard in spring on using my other three pitches, so now I'm more of a complete pitcher as opposed to a two-pitch pitcher who has two other pitches that don't translate."
- We've seen our fair share of errors around the league, including several in our first game. Owen Watson tells us that yes, lots of errors at the start of the season are in fact a thing.
- Paul Swydan reviewed Jeff Passan's new book, The Arm.
- An interesting, non-statsy article from Russell Carleton about Therapeutic Use Exemptions and the nature of ADHD drug prescriptions and how that might effect baseball. Worth a read.