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It's pretty unbelievable how bad the Rays have been this year. With the shutout tonight, they've gone 28 innings without scoring a run, while the Cardinals have gone 27 innings without having allowed a run.
In the first inning, Desmond Jennings led off with a single. Then Kevin Kiermaier grounded into a double play, and it was CLOSE. How close?
Well... we'll take it. Evan Longoria would walk and James Loney would single before Zobrist flied out to Jay to end the inning. Now, plays are independent of each other, and who knows how the rest of the inning would have gone if Kiermaier would have been called safe, but nevertheless, the Cardinals got out of the inning unscathed.
In the bottom of the 4th inning, the Rays would threaten again when James Loney singled with one out, and then Ben Zobrist lined a double into a right field. After a lineout and an intentional walk to Matt Joyce, Logan Forsythe would hit a liner to Kolten Wong to end the inning.
The Cardinals offense was very quiet on the night, with only 3 hits and 2 walks on the night. Fortunately, one of those hits was a home run, which came off the bat of Matt Holliday in the 6th inning. Holliday, who now finally has a slugging percentage equal to his OBP (.265/.380/.380), hit just his 4th HR of the year, but it would be the deciding run.
In the bottom of the 8th, the Rays would load the bases (including a Cardinals challenge on a HBP, which was upheld), before a Matt Joyce popup, and then in the bottom of the 9th, we would see ANOTHER challenge on a force play at first (again upheld), before Trevor Rosenthal finished off the game for good.
MIKE MATHENY DOUBLE SWITCH WATCH
Actually, there weren't any! He straight up pinch hit Randal Grichuk for Oscar Taveras (why? Not really sure!), but it wasn't a double switch.
Fangraphs is down right now so I can't do the WPA or graph, but I'll update the post when it comes back up!