Tampa Bay Rays beat Oakland Athletics 8-3 – MLB News
Tampa Bay Rays hammered the Oakland Athletics 8-3 at Tropicana Field in St Petersburg, Florida on Friday, April 18th in the opening game of their three match series of the 2013 Major League Baseball regular season.
Rays dominated the Athletics right from the start of the contest. After taking an embarrassing series loss against the Baltimore Orioles, the Rays looked in a very confident mood on Friday evening as they bossed their American League arch rivals in almost
all aspects of the game. Rays had a terrible last season as they finished fourth on the American League East Division standings table but a lot has changed since then.
With more depth and variety in their pitching batting lineup, the Rays has emerged as a force to be reckoned with and it will be interesting to see if they can keep up the good work throughout this season to have any chance of claiming the AL East Division
pennant.
"It's still not there. We still need to improve in certain areas, but it's wins like this that can get you going in the right direction," manager Joe Maddon said after his team won for just the third time in 11 games. "It's all about confidence."
http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/29710/jose-lobaton"You always want to keep grinding and try to get the closer in the game, which we did, Oakland manager Bob Melvin said. "He threw some pitches. We had him on the ropes, but he got out of it. It's kind of who we are and try to be is not go down quietly."
A’s, on the other hand, will be extremely disappointed with the outcome of the clash. It will not be wrong to say that they were outclassed by a better team on the day. Unable to convert some simple scoring opportunities, Oakland paid the price for their
rustiness. Rays’ starting pitcher Alex Cobb had one of his career best nights as he allowed just three runs in seven plus innings to claim his second win of the season. Relief pitcher Fernando Rodney tossed up the perfect ninth to help the Rays hold on to
their five run lead.
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