Rays stop their historic pace with loss to Blue Jays

The historic rhythm of the Tampa Bay Rays in the Major Leagues (MLB) could no longer continue. The Toronto Blue Jays was the team responsible for this by handing him his first loss of the season by a score of 6-3 and stopping the goal of the team led by Kevin Cash of becoming the only club with the most wins in a season start. of history.

The Rays entered this game with a 13-0 record (achieved Thursday against Boston), which allowed them to tie the most victories achieved in an MLB season opener in 123 years of history, along with the Atlanta Braves of 1982 and the 1987 Milwaukee Brewers. That means one more win against the Blue Jays on Friday would have been enough for them to establish themselves as the sole leaders of this brand at 14-0.

However, that did not materialize. Tampa Bay’s first slump of the season took shape early in the game, with George Springer hitting a leadoff home run and Bo Bichette adding five hits, making it 2-0 Toronto from the second inning and setting off the game. victory in the fifth with four more runs to make it an eventual 6-1.

A day earlier, in the finale of the series against the Boston Red Sox, the Rays had managed to come back from 1-3 in the fifth inning to win 9-3 and confirm the record of 13 victories. But on this occasion, luck was not on their side and the ones who exploded in the fifth episode were the Blue Jays, who until before this clash came with a deficit of 8 wins and 5 losses.

Although Tampa Bay rallied with a pair of runs in the seventh on hits by Josh Lowe and Christian Bethancourt, Toronto’s consistent pitching kept them from climbing the scoring and stalled the Rays’ chances of victory at barely. 7.6% that materialized with the 3-6 defeat.

For a change, the spotlight of the night was taken by the shortstop of the Blue Jays, Bo Bichette, making history in the team after becoming the player of that franchise that reached the fastest 500 hits in his career. He reached this mark in 407 games, 25 times faster than outfielders Vernon Wells and Shannon Stewart; Additionally, Bichette has a 2023 start to the season of .391.

The faces of the Mexicans Randy Arozarena and Isaac Paredes, as well as other stars of the season such as Josh Lowe, Harold Ramírez and Yandy Díaz, did not hide moments of uncertainty on the diamond, since the Rays accumulated 14 days without knowing a defeat, which for a baseball team may seem like a much longer period due to the frequency of their games.

During their 13-game winning streak they had defeated the Detroit Tigers, Washington Nationals, Oakland Athletics and Boston Red Sox, all of whom had a negative win-loss record this season in common. Toronto was the first opponent with a different trend and demonstrated its potential before the 34,822 who witnessed the defeat of Tampa Bay in a game that lasted two hours and 37 minutes.

Despite seeing their streak broken, the Rays managed to position themselves in MLB history until April 13 and will continue their dispute in the coming months to advance to their fifth consecutive postseason (since the third was already a record for the institution ) and thus fulfill the deep desire of his fans to win his first World Series after two failed attempts, in 2008 and in 2020.