ST. PETERSBURG -- Rays starter Nick Martinez brought plenty of familiarity with the Reds into Wednesday afternoon’s matchup at Tropicana Field. Martinez pitched for Cincinnati the past two years and still knows plenty of players in the lineup that gave Tampa Bay’s pitching staff fits the past two nights.
Getting to see them again so soon would be “a lot of fun,” Martinez said Tuesday afternoon, and how well they know each other would only add “an extra level of excitement.”
No Rays starter had worked into the seventh inning in their first 23 games of the season, much less into the eighth, as Martinez did for just the fourth time in his Major League career. It was exactly what Tampa Bay needed to avoid a sweep and rest a struggling, overworked bullpen.
Martinez was on the attack all day. He worked quickly, pounded the zone with sinkers, got ahead in counts (with 23 first-pitch strikes to the 30 hitters he faced) and created a ton of weak contact. He didn’t throw a pitch in a three-ball count until the fifth inning, when he issued his lone walk, and only faced one more such count for the rest of the day.
So far, Martinez has been everything the Rays could have hoped for when they signed him to a one-year, $13 million deal in February. He almost immediately became a highly popular teammate inside their clubhouse, and he has been a reliable presence in their rotation, allowing two runs or fewer in each of his first five starts.
The Rays gave Martinez plenty of help, both in the field and at the plate. All three starting outfielders -- Chandler Simpson, Jonny DeLuca and Ryan Vilade -- made an excellent play at the wall behind Martinez, and Simpson added a sliding catch in left in the seventh inning.
Offensively, the Rays put up three runs in the second inning against Reds starter Brandon Williamson, as Junior Caminero added his sixth homer of the season in the third, and Ryan Vilade drove in another run in the fifth.