Rays 4, Red Sox 1: Time to Take an L and Have a Ourselves a Big Mac Attack

It’s been a long series, and not the first one this year against the Rays. Nothing has ended well. Least of all this one, with the Rays cruising to a 4-1 to win to push the Sox back down to .500. It is what it is.

But at least this game started fast. The TL;DR on the first four innings is that things flew by on both sides. Brayan Bello struck out the side in the first — probably the hardest team to do that against, except maybe Miami, because Luis Arráez never strikes out — but the Red Sox promptly wasted a two-walk inning by Shane McClanahan, who’s merely probably the best non-Pablo Reyes pitcher in the American League.

The next three innings went fast and were defined by legit home run-saving catches from Kiké Hernández and Alex Verdugo...

...but outside of singles from Rob Refsnyder and Rafael Devers, not much happened. Masa Yoshida even struck out. It was brisk.

In the fifth, Bello fell to pieces. Luke Railey had a leaoff double, and following a chopper that plated one and saw Refsnyder make a bad decision on the throw (following Jarren Duran’s yesterday), it was 1-0 Tampa Bay. Then Francisco Mejía singled to make it 2-0, Wander Franco singled to load’em up, and Josh Lowe hit a potential double play ball that only netted one out. It was 3-0, but the damage was done.

Christian Arroyo, in his first game back, hit a two-out double and nothing came of it. Maybe surprisingly, Bello stayed in the game, but he escaped unscathed to bring the Sox up in the bottom of the sixth, when they finally struck:

Devers followed up with a single, and McClanahan seemed a bit rattled. He went to 3-1 on Yoshida and things looked good. Then Yoshi grounded into a double play. Butts!

Nick Pivetta came on for the seventh. He walked in a run, was pulled immediately thereafter, at which point the inning ended with the score 4-1. Because of course. The Sox got two baserunners on in the bottom half but stranded them... because of course.

The rest of the game was not interesting (except for the Sox blowing the eighth on a strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play which saw Alex Cora get ejected for arguing), so for those who need to know before we are done here, and because I want to publicize it, the headline is a reference to my favorite Das Racist song. Go enjoy the finest cave-aged cheese for sheez, ma(s), while the Sox fly to Cleveland to face the Guardians.

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