Another game, another late comeback, another win with another Johnny Damon walk-off. The Tampa Bay Rays are riding a wave of solid pitching and hot hitting, capturing their fifth consecutive win – and sixth in the last eight games – Saturday afternoon at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. Trailing for most of the outing, they took the W with Johnny Damon’s clutch, two-out, bases-loaded single in the bottom of the ninth inning.
“We just do not quit,” manager Joe Maddon said. “We seem to pick up offensively as the game is in progress. I prefer five, six pr seven runs in the first couple of innings but I’ll take the win any way we can get [it].”
Rays righty Jeff Niemann started his day off in the right direction, striking out Minnesota’s Denard Span; as the game progressed, though, Twins batters started getting better contact off the towering Texan. A fine example of that, of course, is Jason Kubel’s leadoff home run in the top of the second inning. The Twins’ right fielder took Niemann’s 3-2 offering out to center field for the early lead.
Minnesota added another tally to the score sheet in the third, this time with a little small ball. Leadoff man Alexi Casilla singled and moved to third on Denard Span’s base hit; Casilla scored on a 6-4-3 grounder courtesy of Luke Hughes.
The Rays had an answer in the bottom of the third; Casey Kotchman led off with a base hit and advanced to third on John Jaso’s subsequent single. A Reid Brignac strikeout later, Sam Fuld took his fly ball deep enough into left field for Kotchman to tag up and score for the sacrifice RBI.
This article appears in Apr 14-20, 2011.