Yesterday afternoon, the Tampa Bay Rays successfully completed a sweep of the hapless Baltimore Orioles.

The Rays used another big first inning to propel them to victory, punctuated by a three run blast from Brandon Lowe, his 4th of the season. Carlos Gomez added a solo blast in the sixth inning. Mallex Smith seems to be over his illness and added a three hits to the offensive onslaught. Tommy Pham kept his hit streak alive with another two hits. Willy Adames and Kevin Kiermaier also had two hit games.

On the pitching side, Ryne Stanek suffered from an extreme lack of command opening the game and recorded one out — thanks to a caught stealing — but Yonny Chirinos came in and delivered 6 ¹⁄₃ innings, allowing three runs on seven hits, while he didn’t walk a batter and collected six strikeouts. Chaz Roe would retire the lone batter he faced and Vidal Nuno tossed the final two innings, yielding nothing to Baltimore.

Tonight, the Rays will welcome in the Cleveland Indians for a three game set, with Corey Kluber facing Tampa Bay’s opener, Diego Castillo

Rays Links

• JT received a shoutout from FanGraphs for his article on Ryan Yarbrough breaking fWAR
• Richard Justice spotlights the best games to watch this week, highlighting the Rays and Athletics matchup on Friday
• Minor League Ball looks at the matchup between the Durham Bulls and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders who are about to begin play for the Governor’s Cup
• An article from Charlie Frago on the stadium front - Millions of dollars committed toward a new Rays ballpark, but negotiations haven’t begun
• Surprise, surprise, the Rays bullpen has once again been named MLB’s Bullpen of the Week

Around the League

• According to Ken Rosenthal, several contending teams are very unhappy with how the Josh Donaldson trade went down
• News on the Oakland Athletics starting rotation
• Sean Doolittle took a ride in the Washington Nationals bullpen cart

Rays History

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the Dan Johnson game in Boston. Promoted to the majors that day, Johnson was slated to be in the starting lineup, but weather delayed him getting to the ballpark until just a few minutes before the first pitch. So, he was on the bench. That was, until Joe Maddon called upon him to pinch hit to lead off the ninth inning of a one run game, against Jonathan Papelbon.