After dropping the first game of the set against the Boston Red Sox on Friday, 4-3, the Tampa Bay Rays look to even the score tonight at the Trop.
At 7-7 on the season, both teams enter play looking to get back above .500 with a win.
Wander Franco, 21, became the youngest player in franchise history to have a multi-homer game on Friday — the first of his career. He has hit three home runs in the last two games after starting the season with none.
On the second pitch of the game, and the first of the at-bat, Franco turned on a mislocated 93 mph fastball at the top of the zone, sending it to its rightful home in the right-field stands.
Then, in the fifth inning, Franco fell behind 1-2 before he lined a 90 mph cutter over the right-field wall, bringing the Rays within a pair. The missile registered at 112.4 mph off the bat, the highest exit velocity of his big league career.
Offensively speaking, though, Tampa Bay ran into a ton of bad luck on Friday. Consider that the Rays ended the night with a .280 xBA, per StatCast — some 11 points higher than the Red Sox. Yet, Boston was able to collect 11 hits and score four runs as compared to Tampa Bay’s six and three. Consider, too, that the Rays scolded the ball at 95 mph or greater 13 times, but the hard contact, more often than not, found gloves, not holes. Meanwhile, the Red Sox collected five hits — a few of which would be converted into runs — that registered below 90 mph off the bat. To that end, in the fifth inning, the Rays maintained an ice-cold .083 BABIP while the Red Sox boasted a .500 BABIP. Finally, Kluber’s FIP sat at 4.81, even considering all the bad luck he ran into, while Wacha’s FIP sat at 7.69. By that point, most of the damage had been done. Put another way, the Rays had nothing to show for all the hard contact, while the baseball gods looked down fondly upon the Red Sox. Hey, no one ever said baseball was fair.
With Chris Mazza placed on the 10-day Injured List due to back spasms, Colin Poche was recalled from Durham. In the seventh inning, Poche made his first appearance in a big-league game (be that a regular-season or postseason contest) since October 2019 against Houston in the ALDS. The southpaw got back to making batters look silly on his low-90’s invisible fastball. All told, Poche threw just six pitches (all strikes), and collected one punchout across an inning.
The New What Next
With Ryan Yarbrough rehabbing in Durham, it would appear that the Rays will opt for a bullpen day today with JP Feyereisen (0-0, 0.00 ERA) opening. They’ll be opposed by Garrett Whitlock (1-0, 0.93 ERA).
J.P. Feyereisen threw two scoreless frames his last time out six days ago as an opener and struck out three. He has thrown 5.1 scoreless innings in five appearances this season.
Garrett Whitlock will get the start because Tanner Houck decided not to vaccinate himself against COVID-19, which forced Boston to shuffle its rotation around since he’ll be ineligible to cross the border into Canada when the team travels to Toronto next week. Whitlock has been added to the rotation in a manner of speaking as part of that shuffling. Exactly how long he’ll be able to pitch is not yet clear, although he did make a four-inning relief appearance on April 12, which suggests he will be in the 4-5 inning range this afternoon. The extreme groundball hurler relies primarily on a whiffy 96 mph sinker that has slight arm side run and an 82 mph slider with 12-6 movement, while also mixing in an 84 mph changeup with arm-side fade. Across his career, Whitlock is 1-1 with a 5.14 ERA against the Rays in seven innings of work. Key Matchups: Ji-Man Choi (1-1, 2B, 2 RBI), Yandy Diaz (1-3), Wander Franco (2-4, 2B), Kevin Kiermaier (1-1, 2B), Brandon Lowe (2-3, 2B, RBI), Manuel Margot (1-3, BB)
You can read about the series in our preview, while the starting lineup is below.
Rays 4/23/22 Starting Lineup
- B. Lowe 2B
- Franco SS
- Arozarena DH
- Choi 1B
- J. Lowe LF
- Walls 3B
- Kiermaier CF
- Phillips RF
- Zunino C