Looking Backward While Moving Forward: Rays Crush Wainwright, Cardinals 7-2

On paper, the Tampa Bay Rays should have lost against Adam Wainwright and the Cardinals last night. While the Rays offense has been pretty good over the last 30 days, Wainwright represented an incredibly tough hurdle to overcome — especially when you consider that he, prior to last night’s start, boasted an 0.96 ERA over the last 30 days, while yielding a total of six runs in his last 53-1/3 innings of work. But the Rays not only rose to the expectations set before them, they exceeded them; walking away from Busch Stadium with a huge defeat against one of the best pitchers in baseball, and taking the first game of the series by five run margin, 7-2.