ST. PETERSBURG — The Rays performed almost 100 video games this season whereas claiming sole possession of first place within the American League East standings. They let the Orioles spend solely sooner or later alone on the prime.
Starter Zach Eflin bounced again from his worst begin of the season by pitching seven excellent innings, snapping the Rays’ five-game dropping streak with a 3-0 win over the Orioles on Friday evening earlier than a crowd of 19,703 at Tropicana Field.
Eflin allowed 5 runs in three innings in opposition to the Royals on Sunday as he battled his mechanics all through an outing that made him wish to “flush it down the toilet and move on to the next one.” And transfer on he did, placing collectively one in all his finest begins in a Rays uniform to drag Tampa Bay (61-40) again even within the standings with Baltimore (59-38).
Eflin allowed solely two hits and one stroll whereas placing out eight. He confronted 24 batters and ran up a three-ball rely in opposition to solely two of them. Each of his first 5 strikeouts got here on sinkers that had been referred to as for strikes, then he racked up three extra swinging strikeouts on his four-seam fastball, curveball and sinker to punctuate his outing.
It was the sort of victory the Rays wanted after dropping 12 of their first 15 video games in July. They gave Eflin an early lead, as Brandon Lowe doubled and scored on a second-inning single by Harold Ramírez, then added large solo pictures from their two main house run hitters this season.
Isaac Paredes, who hit a double to the deepest a part of the park within the fourth inning, blasted his 18th house run of the yr out to left-center subject off Orioles starter Kyle Bradish within the sixth inning to make it a 2-0 sport. Jose Siri tacked on his team-leading twentieth homer within the seventh, launching a first-pitch, 99.4 mph fastball from Shintaro Fujinami out to left subject.
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