Mike Brosseau and minor-leaguer Moises Gomez each homered as the Tampa Bay Rays rallied from an early 4-0 deficit to the Boston Red Sox, but Michael Chavis‘ two-run blast in the bottom of the seventh gave Boston a 6-5 Grapefruit League win Friday at JetBlue Park.
Boston scored four times in the bottom of the first inning off Rays starter Rich Hill, who made his spring debut. An error by Gomez on a fly ball by J.D. Martinez allowed Kike Hernandez to score and make it 1-0. A wild pitch on a walk to Devers than let Alex Verdugo scamper home. Former Ray Hunter Renfroe‘s base hit pushed the deficit to 3-0, and Marwin Gonzalez‘s RBI double spelled the end of the inning and the afternoon for Hill.
“You guys will find out that I’m brutally honest about outings, and that sucked,” Hill admitted after the game. “I hold myself to a higher standard.”
“No concerns on our end,” manager Kevin Cash said. “Just a little bit of a battle for him. But he’ll be fine and bounce back, and sometimes it’s ok to get those out of the way nice and early instead of a day when you’re trying to get five innings out of a guy.”
But the Rays’ bullpen kept the Red Sox from adding on, as Diego Castillo, Joe Ryan, and Dietrich Enns each threw a scoreless inning of relief, and Chris Ellis worked two innings of one-hit baseball.
The bats then got Tampa Bay back into the game, starting with Gomez’s solo homer off Red Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez. Brosseau then hit a solo shot, his second of the spring, off reliever Kyle Hart in the fourth.
Brandon Lowe cut the deficit to one run with a sacrifice fly in the fifth off Hart, while Kevin McCarthy allowed a base hit by Dalton Kelly in the sixth to tie the game, and a single to Wander Franco later in the inning to give the Rays a 5-4 lead.
But Drew Strotman could not close out the game in the seventh, as Jonathan Arauz reached on an error by Xavier Edwards, and after Cesar Puello struck out, Chavis homered to right-center to end the game.
Tampa Bay returns home Saturday to take on the Atlanta Braves, with Tyler Glasnow scheduled to make the start against former Rays Opening Day pitcher Charlie Morton. First pitch is scheduled for 1:05, weather permitting.
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.
