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Rays News
The Rays lost two out of three games to the Tigers, and managed to burn through their bullpen in the process of dropping Sunday’s game, which involved two blown leads. Not ideal! I try to remember that we are fortunate that such games have been rare this season.
Marc Topkin writes on player “buy-in” — why the Rays can have relievers who pitch different innings and batters who platoon. Of course, as Chris Archer notes in the article, winning makes buy-in easier, but that would be true no matter what approach Cash was taking.
SNY’s Andy Martino responded to a doozy of a question to explain the Rays success. Seeing NY fans claim that none of the Rays players could crack a Mets or Yankees starting line up really says more about NY fans than about Rays players! Andrea Arcadipane has an excellent, point by point rebuttal of Martino’s response.
Say it ain’t so! Wander to the 10 day IL with a sore hamstring.
Grab your ear buds, it’s podcast time. We have a new edition of our own Rays Your Voice, and our site manager Danny Russell joined the Rays the Roof group for a very special crossover episode.
And the latest on who is up, who is down: Taylor Walls has been called up to replace Wander Franco. Brett Phillips is back from the IL. Nick Anderson has also rejoined the team, and Chris Archer has returned to the IL. He’ll be getting that hip checked. Dietrich Enns, having pitched an effective four innings on Saturday night, will have a chance to start in Archer’s place on Thursday. Here’s the link the the active roster if you you a refresher.
Around the League
You hate to see it! Blake Snell had finally turned his season around but now this:
Blake Snell throws a pitch and immediately walks off with an injury. Groin, I think. pic.twitter.com/Ii5QTC16G5
— Chad Moriyama (@ChadMoriyama) September 12, 2021
In happier news, Max Scherzer joins an elite group of pitchers with 3000 career strikeouts.
Yadier Molina announced that next season will be his last; expect the farewell tour ($) (A question: what’s the cutoff for farewell tour? Like, how good do you have to be? This isn’t a knock at Molina, I just wonder whether there is some official MLB policy).
The Dodgers already had a good rotation. Then came Scherzer. Is this one of the best trade deadline pitching pickups ever? (Trevor Bauer’s season is, however, not surprisingly, over ($)).
Scherzer’s success could be relevant if, as this article claims, Rays and Dodgers have a decent chance of a World Series rematch.
We can laugh about this because no one got hurt and the it didn’t impact the outcome of the game, but what was this pitcher thinking?
It's becoming clear the Orioles don't know how to play baseball pic.twitter.com/QfL7MZgprw
— Dustin Saracini (@DustinSaracini) September 11, 2021
Clearly the Orioles have chosen to go all in on the “worst team in the league” schtick, because a few days later they lost a double header to the Blue Jays and managed this accomplishment:
Blue Jays in the 7th in Game 2: 11 hits, 11 runs. They entered the inning without a hit.
— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) September 12, 2021
That's both the most hits in an inning & the most runs in an inning by a team that entered inning with 0 hits, in the 4th inning or later (Expansion Era, since 1961)
h/t @EliasSports