The Rays won their fourth straight behind a dominant Pepiot outing and early offense
The Tampa Bay Rays are the hottest team in baseball and that held true on Monday night as they won their fourth straight and took game one of this four game set with the O’s by a score of 7-1. Ryan Pepiot was dominant and the offense got going early providing the Rays starter with plenty of run support.
Opposite Pepior was former Rays starter, Zach Eflin. The veteran didn’t have his best stuff working against his former club and surrendered all seven of the Rays runs across five innings. In short, if he made a mistake, the Rays didn’t miss it. He surrendered 12 hits, five of which went for extra bases and two of this left the yard.
The two bombs came courtesy of Lowe and Co. Josh Lowe got the offense going early with a leadoff solo shot over the short porch in right field. Brandon Lowe hit a towering two-run homer to center field to extend the Rays lead to 5-1.
Enough about Eflin. The real story was Pepiot, who tossed eight innings of four hit, one run baseball. He struck out a season high eleven and walked just two. He finished with 98 pitches, 70 of which were strikes.
Pepiot earned the win (4-6) and lowed his ERA on the season to 3.11. From the outset he was locked in and had both the fastball and changeup working, striking out six not he former and five on the latter.
This game was all Rays all night long as they ambushed Eflin and never took their foot off the gas. They scored in the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth innings before being held scoreless over the final three frames. Nonetheless, they had established a 7-1 lead thought he first five innings and didn’t look back.
Brandon Lowe (2), Aranda (2), Caminero (2), Morel (2), and Mangum (3) all recorded multiple hits on the night. Mangum tallied three RBIs as well.
Also of note was the Rays debut of former top-prospect and recent trade acquisition, Forrest Whitley. He tossed a one-two-three ninth inning to close the door and looked the part. Kyle Snyder should have some fun with his repertoire.
All in all, it was another solid win and the Rays had all facets of the game working in unison. With the win and the Yankees’ extra-inning loss, the Rays now sit just 2.5 games back of first place and eight games over .500.
**Also, since the Rays won, we are just going to pretend that the egregious missed call at first base on the Josh Lowe bunt never happened… because, yikes.