August 4, 2020

G11: Rays 5, Red Sox 1

Red Sox - 010 000 000 - 1  8  0
Rays    - 000 220 10x - 5  9  1
The Rays were home on Tuesday night, after suffering through an 0-5 road trip during which they scored only 13 runs in five games, batting .185. Back at the Trop, they did two things against the Red Sox that they have failed to do on the road: score five runs in a game, and win.

The Red Sox are now 3-8. They got off to a 3-8 start last season, also, and were 31-29 after 60 games. In 2011, they began 2-9, which is tied with 1925, 1927, and 1996 for the franchise's worst 11-game start to a season.

Strikeouts accounted for five of the Rays' first seven outs, but they put their offense in order against Nathan Eovaldi (5-6-4-1-6, 85) in the middle innings. Mitch Moreland's third home run of the season had given the Red Sox a 1-0 lead in the second, but the Rays wiped that out in the fourth. After Eovaldi got the first two outs, a walk, a single, and Hunter Renfroe's two-run double put the Rays on top 2-1.

In the fifth, Tampa Bay did their scoring with no outs. Eovaldi hit the leadoff batter and gave up a triple to Austin Meadows (back after missing the Rays' first 10 games with SARS-CoV-2) and a single to Brandon Lowe.

The Red Sox stranded men at second and third in the third, wasted a one-out double in the sixth, and had runners at first and second with one out in the eighth, but Pete Fairbanks struck out both J.D. Martinez and Xander Bogaerts, swinging.

Down by four in the ninth, singles by Christian Vázquez, Kevin Pillar, and Jackie Bradley loaded the bases. In a near-repeat of the seventh, Jose Peraza and Andrew Benintendi both struck out looking.
Nathan Eovaldi / Charlie Morton
Benintendi, LF
Devers, 3B
Martinez, DH
Bogaerts, SS
Moreland, 1B
Vázquez, C
Verdugo, RF
Bradley, CF
Peraza, 2B
From MLB: Tonight's Marlins-Orioles game may be delayed as the teams await the final test results that could (or could not) clear the Marlins to play.

Craig Calcaterra tweets: "I ask about players leaving the hotel because a little bird in a position to know tells me that they have witnessed a number of players currently on a road trip leave the team hotels in Ubers, etc. tonight [last night, 9 PM-ish]. Won't say where to not blow my source's cover, but it's happening."

A reply: "Not surprised, I've seen pics on instagram from players' wives out at restaurants with players on road trips last week before the outbreaks started. I knew problems would happen when I saw that."

This Date In Baseball History (Tim Hurst Edition)
1897: In the second inning of the second game of a doubleheader between the Pirates and Reds in Cincinnati, OH, fans throw an empty beer bottle in the direction of umpire Tim Hurst. Hurst picks it up and throws it right back in the crowd. He is arrested and fined $100 dollars on a charge of assault and battery when the bottle hits a spectator [a fireman, reportedly], causing a gash over his right eye.

1908: The Brooklyn Superbas and St. Louis Cardinals play an entire game with one ball. Brooklyn wins, 3-0.

1909: Umpire Tim Hurst instigates a riot by spitting in the face of Athletics 2B Eddie Collins, who had questioned a call. Under police guard, Hurst is ushered off the field. This incident will eventually lead to Hurst's banishment from baseball in two weeks. [This actually happened on August 3, 1909]

1911: Lee Tannehill of the White Sox, the only SS to execute two unassisted double plays in one season, makes both of them in the same game versus Washington. Walter Johnson still wins 1-0 for the Senators in the first game of a doubleheader. In the second game, Germany Schaefer famously steals first base for the Senators. In the bottom of the ninth, with Clyde Milan on third base, he steals second in an attempt to draw a throw, in order to allow Milan to score. When that fails, he leads off second, and breaks towards first base on the next pitch, making it safely, and then, while Sox manager Hugh Duffy is out arguing the call, he attempts to steal again. This time, Milan breaks for home and the White Sox throw him out to end the inning. The rules will be changed to prevent players from running the bases backwards in order to confuse the defense or make a mockery of the game ...

1989: Dave Stieb retires the first 26 batters he faces before giving up two hits in a 2-1 win over the Yankees. The previous September, the Toronto Blue Jays' hard luck hurler lost back-to-back no-hit bids with two outs in the ninth inning.
Hurst ("The pay is good, and you can't beat the hours - three to five"):
In 1900, a number of owners asked that he be banned from their cities because of his fiery temper and ungentlemanly language. He only umpired one game in 1904 and was out of action until hired by the American League in mid-season in 1905. He umpired in the junior circuit until 1909, when he was fired by AL President Ban Johnson on August 12th following a heated argument with Eddie Collins of the Philadelphia Athletics in a game on August 3rd. According to his obituary "Hurst insulted Collins so flagrantly that Ban Johnson fired him and wouldn't hear of a reconsideration of his case." What happened was that he called Collins out when [Collins was] trying to advance from first to second on a fly out, even though Chicago White Sox second baseman Jake Atz had clearly dropped the ball; when the mild-mannered Collins objected, Hurst insulted him and spit a wad of chewing tobacco at him. It seemed that Hurst's motivation at making the call, which came late in the second game of a doubleheader, was that he wanted to catch a train home from Philadelphia to his home in New York City, and thus made a deliberately bad call to shorten the game. ...

Hall of Fame umpire Bill Klem later called him "the toughest umpire of them all"; "he was so tough that if a ballplayer did not like one of his decisions and challenged him on the field, Tim would say 'OK, we'll stop the game and go right under the stands and settle it now.'" He went on to add that one day, a batter stepped out of the box to show disagreement with one of Hurst's calls; the umpire replied that if he did it one more time, he would spit in his eye. The batter did it again one pitch later, and Hurst kept his promise. He was involved in a number of fights with players, including one with Kid Elberfeld earlier in 1909 that had already tried Ban Johnson's patience with his outbursts.

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