Robert's Sportscast - 6/19

Today's game was between the visiting Houston Astros and the home Tampa Bay Rays. The final score was the Rays 5 to the Astros 0. It was a close game, being 2-0 until the 7th inning when the Rays hit back-to-back home runs by Kiermaier and Longoria. The winning pitcher was Archer for the Rays and the losing pitcher was Mchugh.

We saw a few ex A's players there, including Chris Carter (Astros DH), and Grant Balfour who is the Rays closer. He made an appearance in the 9th inning to close the game, even though it was not a closing situation. The Astros just were not able to get many hits, and they certainly were not able to piece them together to score any runs.

In total they had only three singles, and three walks. The Astros also struck out 11 times, two of which were looking. At this stadium they had an advertisement give away, so if the Rays struck out 10 or more players everyone in the stadium could get a free pizza coupon. During this game, the Rays were led by an amazingly pitched game by Archer, and he was backed up by 5 runs. The Rays had 5 singles, one double, and two home runs -which were back to back.

This game was quite exiting to watch, as there was a significant amount of good defense plays as well as a lot of long outs. I think there were at least 5 balls that were hit to the warning track by both teams combined. Also during the game the 9th batter for the Rays, Hanigan, suicide squeezed in the 4th inning. This leads me to make him the player of the game, along with the suicide squeeze he got on three other times -one by a walk and two of them were base hit singles. He also scored a run in the 7th. My player of the game for the Astros was the pitcher Mchugh. Even though he ended up with a loss, his appearance was quite deceiving. He was able to keep the Rays on their toes with an extremely nasty curveball and a fast cutter that the batters seemed to not catch up to.