Chris Archer pitches during the first inning against the Cleveland Indians. (Photo courtesy of Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Chris Archer pitches during the first inning against the Cleveland Indians. (Photo courtesy of Jason Miller/Getty Images)

Going into Friday night’s game, Rays starter Chris Archer set one goal for himself in this, his final start of the season: pitch strongly.   And over the course of 7-2/3 innings of baseball, Archer put together his strongest outing of the season — holding the Indians to one run on three hits, while striking out six. Unfortunately for him,Jose Ramirez took advantage of a first inning mistake pitch for the only run of the game, and the Rays had to butt heads with the 2014 Cy Young Award contender, Corey Kluber.

The opinion of many, Archer needs to master one more pitch — say, a change-up — before he can meet his potential. Ian Malinowski touched on that in his latest piece for DRaysBay. However, Archer used his change to great effect last night, tossing it for strikes 71% of the time (1 Whiff, 2 balls in play with an out, 7 strikes not in play) and throwing off the timing of the opposing hitters along the way. Archer avoided the big inning and only allowed one base runner to get past first base after Ramirez’s first inning solo shot. In the end, the right handed version of DP pitched very well, giving up only three hits while walking two.

Sadly Archer walked away with the tough luck loss, thanks to Kluber. The sweeping movement he got on both his sinker and his curve was pretty remarkable, and he had the ability to work those pitches to the edges of the zone. Kluber set up the Rays hitters with his backdoor breaking pitches, and sinkers at the bottom of the zone, then put them away with an outside power curve to righties, and sinkers on the outside corner to lefties. Sequencing, sequencing, sequencing… Kulber masterfully hit his spots, and put down Tampa Bay’s two scoring opportunities — the first following a triple by Kevin Kiermaier in the fifth inning, and the other following a Kiermaier walk in the seventh inning, which put two on with two outs. In the case of the seventh, Ryan Hanigan struck out looking to end the threat and the inning.

Archer ended his first full year in the bigs with three consecutive solid outings, a 3.42 ERA and a very respectable 3.36 FIP.

The New What Next

Alex Colome will make his final start of the 2014 season against Carlos Carrasco. Carrasco (5-2, 1.32 ERA) has been very good in his nine starts since rejoining the Indians rotation. While Carrasco is 1-1 with a 4.91 ERA against the Rays in his previous 11 innings of work, the 27 year-old RHP held the Rays hit-less in 1-2/3 innings of work out of the pen in the aforementioned May series at The Trop. You can read about the pitching matchup in our series preview.

Rays 9/27/14 Starting Lineup

Zobrist CF
DeJesus DH
Longoria 3B
Loney 1B
Myers RF
Franklin SS
Joyce LF
Hanigan C
Forsythe 2B
Colome RHP

Noteworthiness

  • Sour grapes, Archer was one out short of a potential complete game on his 26th birthday. I still don’t know why Maddon didn’t leave him in. Had Joe left Archer in, he would have become the second AL pitcher in 20 years to throw a complete game on his birthday (Sabathia did so against TB on 7/21/11).

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