Rays show a lot in winning 2nd straight, but it’s time for more

TAMPA — Any momentum from Tuesday night’s walkoff win seemed long gone when Taj Bradley began Wednesday’s matinee by hitting the first Astros batter and allowing a homer to the second.

“Probably started as bad as it could,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said.

But Bradley quickly found a groove. His mates got the two runs back, then flexed their muscles with Curtis Mead, Josh Lowe, Brandon Lowe and Yandy Diaz combining for a season high-matching four homers. They played some dazzling defense. Cash got extremely irate (which may be a polite description) at the umpires, eventually ejected and potentially suspended.

And by the end of the sweltering afternoon, the Rays grasped an 8-4 victory and something they haven’t had much lately: a winning streak (and at Steinbrenner Field!)

Two straight doesn’t seem like much, but it’s the best the Rays (23-26) have done over the last 3 ½ weeks.

And if they’re a better team than they’ve shown — as they claim — maybe they can keep rolling.

“I feel like we’ve kind of struggled to fully get going,” Mead said, “and a couple wins like (Wednesday) and (Tuesday) night, hopefully we can build off that and take it into this weekend.”

There is something to how they are winning in coming from behind.

“We just need to keep being resilient,” said Josh Lowe. “We’re never out of ballgames. Like we’ve seen, this lineup can spark some runs like that quick.”

Tuesday night it was late-inning dramatics, getting even in the eighth and winning in the ninth on Taylor Walls sac fly.

Wednesday, arguably it was the two-run response in the bottom of the first off Hunter Brown to tie the Astros that mattered most.

Diaz led off with a single, then made a small play that had a huge impact, hustling to second on Josh Lowe’s flyout, which put him in position to score on Jonathan Aranda’s two-out single — and led to an error allowing Aranda to reach second, and then later score on Chandler Simpson‘s single.

“Big time, heads-up baseball play by Yandy right there,” Cash said. “Just not taking anything for granted. That extra 90 feet matters. We were able to capitalize with a base hit, and then followed with another one when Jonny was at second base. We all high-fived Yandy for that.”

Bradley, who walked the third batter in the first and needed a double play to escape further trouble, took the 2-2 score as a reset and ran with it, allowing only two more hits and working six strong innings.

“They had my back coming in to the bottom of the first and just tying the game back up,” he said. “I’m just going to keep fighting no matter what.”

His teammates seemed to have the same attitude.

Mead, who found out at 10:30 a.m. he was starting with Walls experiencing groin soreness, gave them the lead with the first homer of his frustrating season — a two-out shot in the fourth off Brown, who came in as one of the league’s best starters — and made several good plays.

“(Mead) had a heck of a ballgame for a guy that wasn’t coming to the ballpark thinking he was starting,” Cash said. “(Bench coach Rodney Linares) made a joke after the home run that maybe anytime he plays, we just shouldn’t tell him.”

One flaw of the Rays offense has been the inability to add on runs. Wednesday they did, and it proved to be important.

Josh Lowe hit Brown’s first pitch of the fifth for a 410-foot homer to center, and Brandon Lowe hit the next 347 feet to right-center to make it 5-2.

In Game 49, that somehow was the first time any Rays players hit back-to-back homers this season.

And more special to the two players whose names are spelled the same but pronounced differently.

“I think that might be the he first time that’s ever happened to us,” Brandon Lowe said.

But two Houston homers off reliever Edwin Uceta, the second by ex-Ray Isaac Paredes, who also went deep in the first, cut that gap to 5-4.

The Rays added on again, with Diaz hitting a 435-foot, three-run blast to center, and patting his bulging right bicep when talking about it later.

“That’s what good teams do,” Josh Lowe said. “That’s how you win ballgames. You score early, you don’t go quiet there, you score again, and you keep scoring more runs. I think arguably the biggest swing of the day was probably Yandy’s homer there. That kind of was the dagger.”

Overall, the Rays played one of their more interesting and entertaining games, which included the histrionics from Cash protesting an eighth-inning call on whether Houston’s Yainer Diaz struck out or was hit by a pitch.

“I wish I could have heard everything he was saying. I haven’t seen him that fired up,” Josh Lowe said. “He was pretty angry (Tuesday) during the check swing during my at-bat — rightfully so.

“But he got after it today.”

In different ways, all the Rays did.

Now we’ll see if they can do it again Friday.

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Rays show a lot in winning 2nd straight, but it’s time for more

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