Michael Wacha threw six innings of three-hit ball, and Kevin Kiermaier‘s RBI triple broke a 1-1 tie, helping the Tampa Bay Rays snap their two-game skid with a 5-3 win over the Minnesota Twins Friday night at Tropicana Field.
The Twins got out to an early 1-0 lead, as Jorge Polanco‘s solo homer with two outs in the first of Wacha, his 25th if the year, gave Minnesota the advantage, but after a 1-2-3 bottom of the first, Rays bats made an adjustment against Twins starter Randy Dobnak. Austin meadows led off the inning with a double, moving to third on a wild pitch, and scoring on the contact play when Randy Arozarena‘s grounder was not thrown home in time by Miguel Sano.
Kiermaier followed with a triple into the right-center field gap that allowed Arozarena to hustle around and break the tie, and a groundout by Diaz extended the lead to 3-1.
Tampa Bay added two more runs an inning later against Dobnak, with Joey Wendle singling to start the inning, scoring on a double by Nelson Cruz to make it 4-1, and Meadows drove in Cruz to make it a 5-1 game.
Wacha (3-4) allowed just one other run, also on a solo homer, this time by Ryan Jeffers in the fifth. Pete Fairbanks worked a scoreless seventh, before Minnesota got one more run off the Tampa Bay bullpen, this time on a two-out double by Polanco off David Robertson.
Andrew Kittredge worked around a two-out error by Taylor Walls in the ninth to earn his sixth save of the season.
The win allows the Rays to maintain a 6 1/2 game lead over New York in the American League East.
The Rays will look to guarantee a winning homestand with a victory Saturday, as Chris Archer (0-1, 4.35 ERA) takes ob Andrew Albers (1-0, 0.96 ERA). First pitch is scheduled for 4:05.
Steve Carney is the founder and publisher of St. Pete Nine. One of the people most associated with baseball coverage in Tampa Bay, he spent 13 seasons covering the Rays for flagship radio station WDAE, first as producer of Rays Radio broadcasts, then as beat reporter beginning in 2011. He likes new analytics and aged bourbon, and is the owner of one of the ugliest knuckleballs ever witnessed by baseball scouts.
