Spring Showers, Rays Late Blooming Flowers: Rays 8, Pirates 7

A game which looked like it would be a late loss in the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th became a victory for the good guys in the 13th as the Rays held on after 4 hours ans 12 minutes of game time around a 2 hour and 27 minute rain delay. Kudos to the broadcast for keeping it entertaining during the nearly three-hour rain delay as Brian Anderson, Dewayne Staats, and Ryan Bass did their best to keep us entertained with some programming from MLB Network on Junior Caminero included showing us where the young man rates by average bat speed both this season as well as since the start of the 2024 season: The game itself was a tale of two halves, if you will. Prior to the rain delay, it was was all Pirates on the scoreboard twice following up Drew Rasmussen walks with home runs.

The latter one came off the bat of Marcel Ozuna while the first one came from longtime Rays nemesis Ryan O’Hearn who has seemingly slashed . 600/. 800/1.

200 against the Rays in recent seasons. The Rays had their chance to get to Skenes in the second inning, but things materialized that inning in the most improbable way leading to the club not scoring depsite having bases loaded and nobody out. The inning opened with Jake Fraley singling to right field, which was followed up with a catcher’s interference play when Henry Davis impeded the swing of Cedric Mullins, who still hit a hanging change-up to the warning track.

One could argue that batted ball would have led to a home run had the swing not been disrupted by the contact. Richie Palacios followed that nonsense up with a nice piece of hitting to load the bases with nobody out, but the inning quickly went downhill from there. Hunter Feduccia hit a weak groundball to the right side and it was ruled Palacios interfered with Spencer Horwitz’s ability to field the baseball with a backwards motion.