Tampa Bay Rays News and Links: An incredible night of baseball

Last night, the Tampa Bay Ray defeated the Houston Astros by the score of 6-4, with everyone delivering solid efforts. Evan Longoria and Logan Morrison homerer, with Longoria later adding a triple, single, and a double to hit for the second cycle in Rays history.

Lucas Duda continues to be unstoppable force of dudeness as he provided a multi-hit day and came inches from another homer. Despite not having his best stuff, Chris Archer managed to hold the best offense in baseball at bay for the first five innings, before surrendering two homers. He’d leave with runners on base in the seventh — both of whom, came around to score. The bullpen would record all of the outs in the final three innings, yielding just one hit and a walk over those frames.

The Yankees lost, but the Red Sox won, leapfrogging them back of the Yankees for the division lead. The Rays meanwhile are now four games back in the East and 1.5 games back of the Kansas City Royals in the Wild Card chase, tied with the Seattle Mariners.

• The Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians played an exciting, bizarre game last night as both Chris Sale and Craig Kimbrel would be off their game. The Red Sox would walk it off, but earlier in the game, Austin Jackson made one of the best catches of the season.

• More on Evan Longoria hitting for the cycle

• To add to this fun night of baseball, two pitchers hit their first career homers with Jon Lester going deep for the Chicago Cubs and Max Scherzer leaving the yard for the Washington Nationals.
• The Avila family tree has the GM of the Detroit Tigers and a extremely recent former catcher for the Detroit Tigers. The latter of which was just traded at the deadline, much to the disdain of the Matriarch of the Avila household.
• Edinson Volquez, who three a no-hitter earlier this year for the Marlins, will have to undergo Tommy John Surgery