Tampa Bay Rays shutout Cleveland Indians 6-0 to split four-game series – MLB Update
Tampa Bay Rays shut-out Cleveland Indians 6-0 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida on Thursday, July 19 in the finale of their four match series of the 2012 Major League Baseball.
The Rays needed this win desperately. Indians led the series 2-1 going into the finale and their Manager Manny Acta was expecting another dominant performance from his team but the Rays stuck to their tasks brilliantly to salvage their pride.
Luke Scott looked comfortable on the plate as he homered to right in the third inning to break the deadlock and put the Rays on the board. B.J. Upton, Sean Rodriguez, Jose Molina, Desmond Jennings combined to extend Rays’ lead to 4-0 in the sixth inning.
Carlos Pena also made a useful contribution with an RBI single to centre in the sixth and Jeff Keppinger doubled to left in the seventh to give Tampa Bay complete control of the situation.
Starting pitcher David Price, who has looked in commanding form since the start of 2012 season, put up another leading show as he pitched seven scoreless innings to pick up his 13th win of the season.
"My fastball's gotten better," Price said in a post game interview. "I have more velocity; it's consistent throughout the entire game. The curveball's better and my cutter is more consistent right now. I throw my changeup whenever I need to and that's a
little tougher for those guys."
Allowing just two hits with seven strike-outs, he created all sorts of problems for the Indians’ batting line-up.
"That's why I felt that (Wednesday's) win was so important for us, because you really don't want come into the last game of the series trying to tie the series against David Price," Indians’ manager Manny Acta said. "He overpowered us. We just didn't have
good at-bats against him."
Cleveland secured a narrow 3-2 win in series opener. The Rays bounced back strongly in Game 2 to level series. Another decent performance on Thursday helped them split the four game series with the Indians.
It will be interesting to see if the Rays can maintain their fine form to replace second placed Baltimore Orioles on the American League East Division standings table.
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