His story is an interesting read<\/a>, as he\u2019s faced a range of obstacles personally and in the game. <\/p>\nFriday night\u2019s lights will shine on LHP Framber Valdez, who is throwing as well as ever, with his extreme groundball rates and perplexing sinker leading the way.<\/p>\n
UCF product LHP Colton Gordon then takes the mound Saturday, optioned and recalled in May he\u2019s got three starts on the season, including his major league debut, and just a 3% walk rate. He\u2019s mostly four-seam and sweeper, but mixes a sinker alongside a curve. <\/p>\n
Finally, there\u2019s RHP Hunter Brown, who has performed like one of baseball\u2019s best this season. He\u2019s got a four-seam\/sinker combo with a knuckle curve that locates well, and a change. Batters are making extremely weak contact off his stuff this year, as evidenced by his 29% hard-hit rate allowed and his 2.00 ERA. <\/p>\n
Frivolities
\nThe top players by career WAR to have played for the Rays and Astros:<\/p>\n
Dwight Gooden
\nCarlos Pena
\nScott Kazmir
\nAubrey Huff
\nJulio Lugo<\/p>\n
The Rays best player offensively against the Astros all-time (min. 25 PA):
Tim Beckham: .424\/.441\/.727 with 1 HR over 34 PA
The next four are Corey Dickerson, Wander Franco, BJ Upton, & Brandon Guyer<\/p>\n
The Rays most previous transaction with the Astros
\u2014 8\/1\/22: Rays trade Jayden Murray to the Astros and Seth Johnson to the Orioles. Astros trade Jose Siri to the Rays and Chayce McDermott to the Orioles. Orioles trade Trey Mancini to the Astros.
\nThe Rays first transaction with the Astros
\u2014 4\/13\/00: Rays select Dwight Gooden off of waivers from the Astros<\/p>\n
Probable pitchers are projected by FanGraphs<\/p>\n
GAME ONE<\/p>\n
Thursday, May 29th
8:10 PM EDT<\/p>\n
RHP Shane Baz vs RHP Ryan Gusto<\/p>\n
GAME TWO<\/p>\n
Friday, May 30th
8:10 PM EDT<\/p>\n
RHP Ryan Pepiot vs LHP Framber Valdez<\/p>\n
GAME THREE<\/p>\n
Saturday, May 31st
4:10 PM EDT<\/p>\n
RHP Zack Littell vs LHP Colton Gordon<\/p>\n
GAME FOUR<\/p>\n
Sunday, June 1st
2:10 PM EDT<\/p>\n
RHP Taj Bradley vs RHP Hunter Brown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rays go back on the road one game over .500, taking on the Houston Astros for four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,296,3513,181,139,54,3211,4,3227,297,1646,295,2411],"class_list":{"0":"post-64555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-bay","11":"tag-draysbay","12":"tag-front-page","13":"tag-houston","14":"tag-houston-astros","15":"tag-houstonastros","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-preview","18":"tag-rays","19":"tag-series","20":"tag-tampa","21":"tag-vs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114593012591221661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64555","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=64555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}