Back to Blog
Rays score tonight7/23/2023 ![]() One of the best qualities we’ve seen from him going back to his debut last summer has been his poise, and he let the error roll on by. Houck didn’t let the mistakes lead to a snowball effect, thankfully. Sure enough, he’d come home in the very next at bat on a sacrifice fly, giving Tampa their first run of the day. The ball sailed into center field, getting Kiermaier over to third. Kevin Plawecki, starting behind the plate in this one, never really had a chance on the throw but went for it anyway. ![]() Houck did let Kevin Kiermaier reach on a single to start the inning, and the Rays veteran quickly tried to get over to second with a steal. However, the third saw the first real trouble for the rookie, albeit not entirely due to his pitching. He struck out two in that process as well. The Rays couldn’t get anything going in the first two innings of this game, with Houck setting down the side in the first before allowing just a two-out single in the second. Particularly encouraging was that we saw a few splitters in the mix, and to my eye they were the best we’ve seen of that particular offering of his young career. His command wasn’t always on point, leading to some deep counts and rising pitch counts, but the stuff was great. Houck is part of what the team is hoping is a major turnaround for the rest of the way, joining the rotation on a permanent basis starting with this outing, as Garrett Richards and Martín Pérez have been relegated to the bullpen. Did they get all of those runs out of their system? You can never be too safe, so just to cover all their bases Boston was looking for a big start from Tanner Houck on Thursday to try and take this series against the Rays and give the team their first bit of real momentum in weeks. But also, there is a little part of that fear that is always right. Most don’t really think a team can “waste” runs, literally speaking. When people get apprehensive about their team scoring a particularly abnormal number of runs in a game - like, say, when a team scores 20 one night - it is mostly tongue-in-cheek. The Rays took the lead there, and just continued to add to it against the Red Sox bullpen, putting the game out of reach in just a few frames. Tanner Houck did his best to keep his team in the game, but the sixth inning proved to be a bit too much. Boston’s bats were kept quiet all night long against what was a bullpen game from Tampa Bay. The Red Sox had what seemed to be a cathartic blowout on Wednesday, with the bats finally coming alive and scoring a whopping 20 runs on the night.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |