Price Gets Texas-Sized Monkey Off His Back at LinesMaker

Price Gets Texas-Sized Monkey Off His Back

The vic­tory gave the Rays their fourth con­sec­u­tive series win. They have won nine of their last 11 games to remain in a tie with the Ori­oles for first place in the Amer­i­can League East.

“Per­son­ally, for myself, I’ve never beat those guys,” Price said. “So first and fore­most, that feels great. I’m pumped that we won, as well. I can turn that page now.

“… I feel like that’s the best lineup in base­ball. They’ve got power one through nine. They’ve got speed mixed in there and they can hit the ball out to any part of the ball­park. You have to be able to make pitches. Keep the ball down.”

Price first faced the Rangers on July 4, 2009, at Rangers Ball­park – when he allowed six earned runs in 1 1/3 innings in a game he remem­bers as his worst start ever. Since then he had not had any suc­cess against the Rangers, post­ing an 0–3 mark with a 5.67 ERA in six starts.

Price held the Rangers to two runs on six hits in 6 1/3 innings on Sun­day to move to 4–1 on the sea­son. But at the out­set, the Rays left-hander looked as though he might be headed for another rough outing.

Josh Hamilton’s one-out sin­gle in the first scored Elvis Andrus to give the Rangers a 1–0 lead. Hamil­ton had to leave the game due to back stiff­ness in the top of the third, after going 4-for-9 with a home run, six RBIs and three runs scored for the weekend.

The Rays got busy in the sec­ond, when Ben Zobrist hit a lead­off triple against Derek Hol­land and scored on Jeff Keppinger’s sin­gle to right. B.J. Upton’s dou­ble moved Kep­pinger to third before Luke Scott dou­bled to drive home Kep­pinger. Sean Rodriguez’s sac­ri­fice fly scored Upton from third to put the Rays up, 3–1.

“We went out there, I gave up one in the first and we bounced back with three in the sec­ond,” Price said. “It’s always big when they can get that run back and add to the lead. They made it eas­ier on me tonight.”

Zobrist dou­bled home Car­los Pena with one out in the sec­ond to push the lead to 4–1.

The Rangers’ best chance against Price came in the fifth, when they had run­ners in scor­ing posi­tion with one out. Andrus grounded out to short­stop to drive home Yorvit Tor­re­alba to cut the lead to 4–2. Price then struck out David Mur­phy to end the threat.

“[Price] threw well, so you have to give credit where credit is due,” Rangers des­ig­nated hit­ter Michael Young said. “But as an offense, it’s our respon­si­bil­ity to score runs. We’ve got to find a way to make adjust­ments. Any time we’re on the field, we feel we have a chance to score runs. David is a good pitcher and threw the ball well tonight, but we still take pride in being able to score runs. And we didn’t get it done.”

Tampa Bay added an insur­ance run in the sev­enth, when Desmond Jen­nings tripled to left-center field to drive home Sean Rodriguez for a 5–2 lead.

Price got the first out in the sev­enth before Joel Per­alta took over and got the final two outs by strik­ing out pinch-hitter Mitch More­land and Ian Kinsler, who watched the third strike. Kinsler argued briefly with home-plate umpire Dan Bellino before Rangers man­ager Ron Wash­ing­ton joined the fray. Shortly there­after, Wash­ing­ton was ejected on a night when he cel­e­brated his 60th birthday.

“I though Joel Per­alta was the key to the game and what he did when he came in and strik­ing out More­land,” Rays man­ager Joe Mad­don said. “I thought that they may pinch-hit there, and I like the matchup a lot. And he gets a great at-bat by Kinsler and fights through that. Joel was kind of the linch­pin through that whole sit­u­a­tion tonight.”

Per­alta also pitched a score­less eighth lead­ing up to closer Fer­nando Rod­ney in the ninth, which is where things got interesting.

Rod­ney, who entered the game 6-for-6 in clos­ing sit­u­a­tions, sur­ren­dered a one-out sin­gle to Nel­son Cruz before hit­ting Mike Napoli. After strik­ing out Tor­re­alba look­ing, More­land hit a slow roller that Rod­ney bob­bled and kicked into foul ter­ri­tory to load the bases. Kinsler then strolled to the plate and unloaded a line drive that Rod­ney stabbed for the third out.

“I thought Fer­nando was great,” Mad­don said. “… I thought he had great stuff. He was throw­ing a lot of strikes. [But there were] a lot of unfor­tu­nate moments that led to [hav­ing] the bases loaded. But over­all, he threw the ball outstanding.”

The Rays have nav­i­gated a beginning-of-the-year stretch high­lighted by the likes of the Yan­kees, Red Sox, Angels, Tigers, and Rangers with a mark has them six games over .500 at 14–8.

“We talked about this, me and [pitch­ing coach Jim] Hickey, a long time before the sea­son started,” Price said. “And if we were .500 through this first stretch of the sea­son, that was good, with the teams we’ve been play­ing. I feel like we’ve played quite a few post­sea­son teams already. We’ve played well. We’ve played good base­ball. And I still feel like we can get better.”

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice. For more MLB news see: Price gets Texas-sized mon­key off his back.

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