Tampa Bay Rays beaten by Washington Nationals 2-5 at Nationals Park – MLB Update
Tampa Bay Rays were beaten by Washington Nationals 2-5 at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C on Thursday, June 21 in the finale of their three match series of the 2012 Major League Baseball regular season.
Tampa Bay are now three games behind the American League Central Division leaders New York Yankees and they will have to start winning games on regular basis to have any chance of making to the playoffs.
Desmond Jennings provided the Rays with a very positive start as he singled to right in the second inning and Hideki Matsui scored to put his side 1-0 ahead. Michael Morse and Ian Desmond gave an immediate response and the Nationals took a crucial 2-1 lead
in the third.
Sean Rodriguez singled to centre in the sixth to keep the Rays in the hunt but Washington used their home conditions to great effect adding runs in the sixth and the seventh. Nationals’ starting pitcher Gio Gonzalez gave up just two runs and seven hits with
four strikeouts in six solid innings.
"I'm glad we're past all this other stuff. That wears me out more than anything," Nationals manager Davey Johnson said.
"We didn't get swept. We won one of the three, and that's a good thing. When you play a three-game series you obviously want to win the series, but the last thing you want is to get swept, and we did not get swept," Maddon said.
"I was going to hook Gio after the sixth and he was working a big anger on me," Johnson said of Gio.
Manager Joe Maddon and company will be very disappointed with the result of the series. Suffering series sweep at the hands of New York Yankees, the Nationals were under a lot of pressure before the start of the series.
The Rays made the most of available opportunities in the opening game, beating their National League East rivals 5-4 in finer details of the game.
With momentum on their side, the fans expected them to take a decisive 2-0 lead in the following game but credit must be given to the Nationals who showed commendable pressure handling abilities to secure a narrow 3-2 win to level series 1-1.
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