Astros 1
Rays 6
contributed by NeilT
I think someone forgot to tell the Rays this season that they were supposed to be an enviously well-oiled machine competing in the AL East, though last night I was envious. I think someone forgot to tell the Red Sox, too, and the Yankees, but they’re not the subject of this recap.
But the Rays! They are supposed to be the very model of a modern major-general, and instead they are casting back to Astro’s very recent past. It’s a tangled line, a fouled hook, a snagged fly, but I think it’s all about the name change. Here you have a perfectly good name, the Devil Rays, named after a perfectly interesting fish. There are a lot of fish names in sports. There’s the Marlins, and the Dolphins. There’s the Texas City Stingarees and the Port Isabel Tarpons. There are Barracudas, Tunas, and Walleyes. And of course there are Hooks. So what do the Rays do? They scrap a perfectly good fish name to name themselves after Florida Man.
So the Florida Men are playing Astrolinean baseball, with a 25-42 record. Granted, they have a lot of players on the DL, but what do you expect when everyone on your team lives in Florida and is named Ray? Just look at some of these headlines:
Florida man in tiny white shorts and belly shirt gets DUI after crashing into three cars.
Florida man run over by van after dog pushes accelerator.
Hallucinating Florida man seeing imaginary aliens walks into store with large knives and asks not to be eaten
Florida man accused of faking black mamba snake bite.
Police arrest Florida man for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at Wal-Mart.
Those are all from a single NPR broadcast, but they’re small fish for Florida Man. If the Rays wanted to stay off the DL, they wouldn’t have picked such a Florida Man name. There are plenty of other names to build a team around. They could have been the Reubens, or the Rons. They could have been the Sphinxes or the Neils. For Gods sake, they could have been the Happys.
Instead they’re the Florida Men, with Tim Ray Beckham, Brandon Ray Guyer, Jeremy Ray Hellickson, Matt Ray Moore, and Will Ray Myers all out for the season or on the DL. Alex Ray Cobb, who isn’t long off the DL, pitched for the Rays and beat the ‘Stros. But still, it’s Alex Ray Cobb, pitching for a team of guys named Ray.
The Rays provided lots of traffic for McWho. Jimmy Ray Loney reached at the top of the second on a Villar fielding error, then Benny Ray Zobrist doubled. Both Benny Ray and Jimmy Ray scored on a Matt Ray Joyce double. Kevin Ray Kiermaier tripled in the third, but was stranded. McWho walked David Ray DeJesus and Matt Ray Joyce in the fourth, and got his first coach’s visit to the mound. Desmond Ray Jennings led off the fifth with a double and Jimmy Ray Loney walked. Benny Ray Zobrist drove them both in on the second triple of the game.
Zeid pitched the sixth and seventh with only one walk to Matt Ray Joyce. Downs gave up a single to Benny Ray Zobrist in the 8th. Kyle Farnsworth gave up the final two runs in the ninth, with singles from Ryan Ray Hanigan, Desmond Ray Jennings, Kevin Ray Kiermaier, and Evan Ray Longoria.
The only Astros score came from a Singleton homer in the fourth off of Matt Ray Joyce, who looked strong. Brad Ray Boxberger replaced Cobb in the seventh, Brad Ray Boxberger pitched the eighth, Joel Ray Peralta the eighth, and Kirby Ray Yates and Jake McGee pitched the ninth. At least they went through a bunch of the bullpen.
Here’s maybe the strangest headline of the lot: Florida Man Beats Astros with Quality Pitching.