Six runs before the Rays had an answer
Griffin Jax got eight outs on Wednesday night in Tampa. He gave up six runs doing it.
New York scored three in the first. Jared Young opened with an RBI single, Carson Benge came home on a throwing error by catcher Liam Hicks, and Marcus Semien doubled down the left-field line to bring Young in. Two innings later the Mets loaded the bases behind an A.J. Ewing infield single, and Brett Baty hit the top of the wall in left-centre for a three-run double. That ended Jax’s outing and, in practical terms, the contest.
The Mets won 10-4 and took the series.
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Tampa Bay had one window
The Rays did climb back into it. Chris Devenski gave up three runs in the fourth, Richie Palacios taking him deep for two of them, and a six-run hole shrank to three with five innings still to play.
It stopped there. Tampa Bay did not score again after that inning, and the New York bullpen worked through the middle of the game without conceding anything. A rally that produces three runs and then nothing is the kind of evening that reads harmlessly in a box score and looks a lot worse in late September, when the same team is counting games behind in the wild-card race.
Seattle, Boston and Tampa Bay are all still doing that arithmetic. Wednesday made it heavier for one of them.
A first hit and a 23rd homer
The seventh inning belonged to two players at opposite ends of a career. Bo Bichette doubled to open it. Nick Morabito, days into his major league life, followed with a three-run double into the left-field corner for the first hit of his career. Not many players get to describe their first as a three-run double.
Juan Soto closed the scoring with his 23rd home run of the season, struck long after the result had settled. That is usually when counting stats get made, and Soto has spent the summer quietly accumulating them while the Mets lineup around him has run hot and cold. Four runs in the seventh turned a comfortable night into a statement one, and Tampa Bay had no reply left.
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