For ‘tis the sport of baseball to have the engineer of infield hits and great defense hoist with his own petard. The Marlins stole the Rays’ playbook and beat them at their own game with infield hits, excellent defense mixed around some timely extra base hits while employing a Jonny Bullpen plan to stifle the Tampa Bay offense.
The Marlins were led by Javier Sanoja who went 3 for 4 with a home run and Esteury Ruiz who drew 3 walks in 4 plate appearances thereby doubling his season walk total over his first 54 plate appearances with Miami.
Shane McClanahan was cruising through the first four innings until he rolled an inside first-pitch slider to Javier Sanoja, who was able to get his hands in just enough to yank the pitch over the left field wall for a home. Those frustrations leaked into a walk to Esteury Ruiz, who easily stole second base and advanced to third on the wild throw. McClanahan was able to strike out Connor Norby, but another hanging breaking ball resulted in a double to the opposite field gap by Joe Mack. That was quickly followed up by two infield singles to load the bases, but a beautiful 6-4-3 double play turned by Taylor Walls and Ben Williamson kept it at a two-run game.
Things just fell apart for McClanahan after his emotions got to him in the 5th, and then the first four batters in the 6th reached base. The linescore could have been much worse had Liam Hicks had an extra biscuit at breakfast, as Dave Wills used to say, as Hicks just missed a grand slam off Casey Legumina:
The Rays had their chances in the middle innings, but failed to execute while Nick Fortes and Taylor Walls went 1 for 3 in challenges leaving the club without any challenges after the 6th inning. That would come back to haunt the team in the 9th. The 5th inning began Richie Palacios becoming the first baserunner for the Rays after Norby was unable to cleanly pick a throw from Sanoja. Kevin Cash then tried to use Ben Williamson’s bat to ball skills for a hit and run, but the contact hitter was shut down on three pitches. Cedric Mullins was hit by a pitch just ahead of Walls grounding into an inning-ending double play.
The Rays had a chance to tie the game after the Marlins big 5th inning with Victor Mesa Jr and Yandy Diaz each singling around a Nick Fortes strikeout. Fortes was called out on strikes twice in the at bat, but replay saved him the first time while he then burned the last team challenge on an obvious strike. The hit by Mesa Jr broke up the no-hitter before that, and Diaz hit the ball so hard to right that Mesa Jr could only advance one base. This set things up nicely for the Rays with Jonathan Aranda and Junior Caminero up, but both had terrible at bats against former Rays reliever Calvin Faucher.
Aranda swung at one pitch the entire at bat, and it was a curveball down around his ankles after taking a first-pitch fastball and a well-tunneled curveball for the first two pltches of the plate appearance:
Caminero then followed that up by chasing a sweepter well out of the zone which went harmlessly off the end of his bat into an easy 4-3 putout to end the inning. This same duo was again given the chance to plate multiple baserunners in the 8th innings, but Aranda struck out on three consecutive 99-mph fastballs from Michael Peterson while Caminero was once again pitched up and in by Miami and got Caminero to swing at three consecutive fastballs that were not in the zone to ogo from a 2-0 count to a strikeout:
The Rays tried to make a game of it in the 9th against former teammate Pete Fairbanks with a leadoff walk by Williamson and then a one-out and two-strike bunt by Taylor Walls bringing Victor Mesa Jr to the plate with his dad in attendance, but Mesa Jr’s seeing eye single was snagged by Liam Hicks just before it got into right field who got it over to Fairbanks at first in the nick of time. Chandler Simpson was called onto pinch hit for Nick Fortes and fought off some tough pitches to go from 0-2 count to draw a walk and bring Yandy Diaz to the plate. Diaz singled before Simpson could even have a chance to steal a base providing Aranda with an opportunity for redemption from his previous two at bats. Aranda earned a nine-pitch walk after spoiling off several tough fastballs. Fairbanks was then pulled after 39 pitches to have Tyler Zuber come in and face Junior Caminero with the bases loaded.
Caminero quickly fell behind with a well-placed first pitch fastball up and then one a bit higher that was called strike two but could not be challenged. It was all for naught as Caminero would strike out chasing yet another pitch out of the zone after fouling off a hanging slider that should have been crushed:
Simpy put, while the offense mostly failed to show up until the 9th inning, the 2-3-4 hitters in this game went 0 for 13 with 7 strikeouts and left 13 runners on base is why this game ended up as it did. Perhaps it was the challenge of facing a different pitcher each time they came up, but the quality of at bats from the heart of the order was simply not there when the opportunities came up. The rubber match is Griffin Jax against Sandy Alcantara, who held the Rays down the last time the two teams tangled back in St. Pete on May 16th.
