Tampa Bay Rays crush Boston Red Sox 7-2 – MLB Update
The Tampa Bay Rays closed in on the Boston Red Sox in the Wild Card standings after a 7-2 annihilation of the American League stalwarts on Friday, September 9 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Red Sox, at one stage, looked strong enough to qualify for the postseason as leaders of the East but a serious dip in form has reduced their confidence as a team. Boston has now lost seven of its previous nine games, a situation which is grave this deep
in the season.
Wade Davis pitched a complete game for the Rays to restrict the visitors to just two runs and six hits to improve his earned-run average to 4.36 for the season. There is room for further improvement in Davis’ performance but he showed immense flare with
the ball in hand to strike-out eight batters in his spell of 114 pitches. His arm strength was commendable and the variations in his pitching did most of the damage for the Red Sox.
"It's actually the first time I've really started throwing a cutter," Davis said. "I've always thrown a slider and we just flattened it out a little bit to stay in the strike zone more. It ended up being pretty effective."
Boston’s manager Terry Francona also praised Davis, saying that his cutter was going really going good for him and his accuracy with this delivery did not allow the Red Sox line-up to connect at will. Adrian Gonzalez and David Ortiz, two of the best in the
Boston’s line-up were reduced to 0-for-4 in the game by Davis’ spotless pitching.
Davis was well complimented by his team’s batting as they helped to post an early lead over the Red Sox, helped by John Jaso’s three-run homer in the second inning, highlighting the aggressive intent of the Rays.
Evan Longoria and Ben Zobrist added a run each in the third inning to extend this lead to five runs and destroy John Lackey’s outing. Lackey was immediately replaced at the mound by Scott Atchison after going for five earned-runs in his spell of three innings
to lose his 12th game of the season with as many wins to his credit thus far.
Red Sox scored two in the sixth inning to retaliate the growing dominance of Rays in the game but Jaso and Reid Brignac were quick to add another two for the Rays in the same inning to regain the five-run advantage for the Rays and subsequently win the game
with this margin.
This three-game series is a must-win for the Red Sox to maintain their lead atop the Wild Card standings. The Rays now need just one more win in two-games to seal the series.
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