In a series full of lows, one player provided the Rays with plenty of spark and that\u2019s their veteran slugger, Yandy Diaz.<\/p>\n
During Tuesday\u2019s game, Diaz provided the bulk of the offense against Zack Wheeler as he launched his 5th home run of the season to pull the Rays within one of the Phillies; they\u2019d go on to lose the game, 8-4, after a bullpen implosion late in the game. The following night, Diaz collected a hit in four trips to the plate. Then on Thursday, Diaz launched another homerun, this time a 3-run shot that put the Rays up 5-1; the bullpen would once again implode and allow the Phillies to take a 7-6 victory in extra innings.<\/p>\n
Overall during the three games, Diaz had three hits in 11 plate appearances, with those two home runs.<\/p>\n
Since the start of play on April 9th, Diaz has been an offensive force for the Rays, hitting .299\/.356\/.523 with 6 HR over 118 plate appearances, registering a 153 wRC+ and accruing 0.9 fWAR over 27 games.<\/p>\n
DRAYSBAY PLAYER OF THE SERIES<\/p>\n
1st: Kameron Misner
\n2nd: Jake Mangum
\n3rd: Brandon Lowe
\n4th: Jose Caballero
\n5th: Joe Boyle
\n6th: Shane Baz
\n7th: Chandler Simpson
\n8th: Christopher Morel
\n9th: Chandler Simpson
\n10th: Mason Englert
\n11th: Taylor Walls
\n12th: Yandy Diaz<\/p>\n
Diaz, 33, is a big league veteran in his 9th season (7th with the Rays) and has a career line of .287\/.370\/.433. The talented hitter received MVP consideration in 2022 and was an All-Star in 2023, and after winning the American League batting title would receive a Silver Slugger award and more MVP consideration.<\/p>\n
The Rays will begin their next series, a three-game set, against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday.<\/p>\n
Who do you think will be our next Player of the Series?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a series full of lows, one player provided the Rays with plenty of spark and that\u2019s their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,6389,3513,181,4,214,3181,297,1646,2550,68,2551,2549,173,6388],"class_list":{"0":"post-13527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-rays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-diaz","10":"tag-draysbay","11":"tag-front-page","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-of","14":"tag-player","15":"tag-rays","16":"tag-series","17":"tag-tampa-bay","18":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","19":"tag-tampabay","20":"tag-tampabayrays","21":"tag-the","22":"tag-yandy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114478370293406488","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}