Fenway Park is quickly becoming a second home for the Tampa Bay Rays, winning the 12th of their last 13 games in Boston with a 9-5 victory over the Red Sox Wednesday night.
Tampa Bay scored early and often, jumping out to an 8-0 lead after four innings, in picking up their seventh straight win at Fenway dating back to last season.
Blake Snell showed flashes of his Cy Young self, pitching five scoreless innings, allowing four hits and striking out six on only 70 pitches for his first win of 2020.
The Rays scored in each of the first four innings, highlighted by home runs by Willy Adames and Brandon Lowe in the second, and Yoshi Tsutsugo in the third. Lowe's and Tsutsugo's homers were two-run shots; Adames' was a solo shot leading off the second.
Yoshi also starred defensively in the bottom of the third, as the Rays flashed some leather. With one out, Boston second baseman Jose Peraza hit a sinking line drive to left field that Tsutsugo corralled with a diving catch to his right.
The next hitter, Red Sox center fielder Kevin Pillar, lined a Fenway wall ball that Kevin Kiermaier quickly fielded, threw to second, and nailed Pillar as he tried to stretch the single into a double.
The Red Sox made it interesting in the eighth, as they seem to do, with six straight hits off Aaron Slegers, who pitched well in his first two innings in relief of Snell. The fifth consecutive hit off Slegers after four straight singles was a grand slam by J.D. Martinez that made the score 8-5. Tzu-Wei Lin followed with a single, and Rays' manager Kevin Cash called for Nick Anderson to put out the fire, which he did. Pete Fairbanks pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to close out the game.
One bright spot for Boston was pitcher Ryan Weber. The St. Petersburg native quieted the Rays bats after he came on with no outs in the fourth, down 8-0. He finished the game for the Red Sox, and kept the Rays scoreless the rest of the way until the ninth, when he allowed a lead off solo home run to Austin Meadows.
The Rays are now in a position to complete a four-game sweep of the Red Sox on Thursday afternoon. Coverage begins on 95.3 WDAE with Steve Carney and the Inside Pitch at 3:30 p.m., with the first pitch set for 4:30 p.m. Tyler Glasnow takes the hill for the Rays, while the Red Sox counter with Kyle Hart, who is making his major-league debut.
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