ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Let us pause and give thanks for those obvious blessings in our lives. For instance, a three-game series against the Baltimore Orioles.
Kind of hard to imagine a better way for the Rays to start a season anew than against their perpetually rebuilding AL East Division rivals. With Sunday afternoon’s 8-0 victory to complete a weekend-opening sweep, the Rays have now beaten the Orioles a team-record 15 consecutive games, dating back to July.
It is also only the third time in franchise history that Tampa Bay has begun a season at 3-0, joining the 2002 and 2012 teams.
Free agent acquisition Corey Kluber, pitching on his 36th birthday, threw 4.2 innings of shutout baseball, and Brandon Lowe crushed a two-run homer for the Rays.
It’s obviously a small sample size against a shaky opponent, but the Rays played pretty much flawless baseball for three days. No errors, no wild pitches, no passed balls. The starting pitchers combined to allow only two runs in 13 innings (1.38 ERA) and the hitters had a .300 batting average.
And if you were worried about Wander Franco and the pressure of his new contract, the 21-year-old shortstop began the season 6-for-11 with three RBI.
For a lineup that put the ball in play less than almost every other team in 2021, the Rays have been surprisingly effective playing small-ball against the Orioles.
After loading the bases with two walks and an infield hit by Harold Ramirez in the second, Tampa Bay went up 2-0 on a sacrifice fly by Mike Zunino and an infield forceout from Manuel Margot. That meant six of the first nine runs they scored in 2022 came via sacrifice flies and groundouts.
It wasn’t long, however, before the big bats woke up.
Lowe launched a massive homer to right-center that came off the bat at 109.3 mph and was measured at 437 feet for his first hit after beginning the season 0-for-7.
The Rays begin a three-game series with Oakland on Monday with the new weekday starting time of 6:40 p.m.
