Tampa Bay Rays beaten by New York Mets 6-9 – MLB Update
Tampa Bay Rays suffered a humiliating series sweep as they lost to New York Mets 6-9 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida on Thursday, June 14 in the finale of their three match series of the 2012 Major League Baseball regular season.
The Mets continued their domination on Thursday evening to earn a rare series sweep at Tropicana Field.
Centre Fielder Kirk Nieuwenhuis looked extremely comfortable on the plate as he hit a leadoff home run in the first inning to put the Mets 1-0 ahead.
Jason Bay also made his presence felt, adding a solo home run to left in the second inning to double Mets’ lead to 2-0.
Matt Joyce doubled to right in the second to level score at 2-2 for the Rays. Eric Johnson had an RBI single to centre to put Tampa Bay ahead 3-2 for the first time.
Mets starting pitcher Johan Santana allowed four runs in just over five innings but still won the game.
"The bullpen deserves all the credit," Santana said. "They did a great job. For all of us, you don't want to come here and lose games. I think this is good for everybody to get three wins in a row, especially after losing three to the Yankees. We're just building up our confidence. We played pretty good."
"They just beat us up for three days ... that happens," Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon said. "It's happened here before. We've been able to recover from that in the past and I anticipate we'll be able to do it again."
Lucas Duda looked on top of his game play as drove in three crucial runs for the Mets. Duda hit a sacrifice fly to left in the third and added a doubled to deep centre in the fourth to help New York take complete control of the situation.
Nieuwenhuis hit his second home run of the game in the fourth inning and Ike Davis singled to deep right in the bottom of the ninth to end the note on an extremely positive note for the Mets.
Desmond Jennings and Carlos Pena scored in the bottom of the ninth but their efforts were never going to be enough.
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