Tampa Bay Rays edge Kansas City Royals 5-3 to take series – MLB Update
Tampa Bay Rays beat the Kansas City Royals 5-3 in a competitive encounter at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida on Wednesday, August 22 in the finale of their three match series of the 2012 Major League Baseball regular season.
Joe Maddon and company put up a clinical show on Wednesday afternoon to complete an emphatic series win. Rays’ pitching rotation and defence, in particular, played a key role in deciding the outcome of the clash.
Jeff Francoeur provided his side with a decent start with an RBI single to centre in the second inning but the Royals were unable to capitalise. Rays bounced back strongly with Ben Zobrist levelling the score with a sacrifice fly hit.
Jeff Keppinger and Ryan Roberts also made the most of available opportunities in third and the sixth to keep Royals on the defensive. Zobrist doubled to the right in the seventh and Jose Lobaton homered to centre in the eighth to help Tampa Bay secure an
important win.
Starting pitcher James Shields tossed up seven plus solid innings to strike-out seven batters. He gave up just three runs on five hits to outpitch his counterpart Luis Mendoza. Relief pitcher Fernando Rodney pitched the perfect ninth under pressure to grab
his 39th save of the season.
"I'm mixing my pitches up pretty well," Shields said. "My delivery has been really, really well ever since the beginning of this month. My change up is back in action."
"Shields set the tone, again," Rays’ manager Joe Maddon said.
"These guys have tremendous starting pitching, tremendous bullpen," Yost said of the Rays. "It's a team you don't really want to come in and play because they're coached well, they're managed well, they play he game right and their pitching is just phenomenal."
With their impressive win over Kansas City, the Rays have now moved up to second position on the American League East Division standings and it will be interesting to see if they can find a way to replace New York Yankees before the end of the season.
Kansas City will definitely be disappointed as they struggled against the Rays and will be looking to put in a better performance in their next series.
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