ST. PETERSBURG -- Rays starter Nick Martinez cruised through the first seven innings of Tuesday night’s game against the Red Sox at Tropicana Field, breezing into the eighth inning with a complete game very much within his reach.
But six pitches, three hits and two runs into the eighth inning, he was suddenly a spectator, resigned to watching from the dugout as Kevin Kelly scaled the mound with the game on the line. So naturally, there was nobody more thrilled than Martinez when Kelly quickly quelled Boston’s rally with three straight groundouts.
“I was jacked up,” Martinez said, smiling. “A lot of F-bombs and high fives.”
It was that kind of night for Martinez and the Rays, who secured a series victory over the Red Sox with a 4-3 win on Tuesday. The Rays snapped a two-series losing streak and improved their record at Tropicana Field to 23-9 by winning back-to-back games for the first time since a five-game streak from May 17-22.
“The way he pitched, he deserved to get the win,” manager Kevin Cash said. “KK picked us up.”
The veteran Martinez set the tone, bouncing back from his first rough outing of the season last time out against the Tigers. After allowing two runs or fewer in each of his first 11 starts to begin the season, the right-hander gave up six runs on nine hits over four innings against Detroit.
This time, Martinez allowed three runs on six hits and didn’t walk a batter while working into the eighth on 73 pitches. He had everything in his arsenal working, and he consistently threw enough strikes to force the Red Sox to swing early and often.
Martinez’s eighth quality start actually raised his ERA to 2.43, the third-lowest mark in the American League behind the Yankees’ Cam Schlittler and Cleveland’s Parker Messick. More importantly, the Rays improved to 10-3 with the 35-year-old on the mound.
The way Martinez saw it, he and the rest of the Rays staff simply ran into a “buzzsaw” in the form of the Tigers lineup last week. That kept him from thinking too deeply or worrying too much about his first and only poor start of the season, and it allowed him to return to form against an aggressive Red Sox lineup.
“You want to limit the bad ones, right?” Martinez said. “Nothing we had to dissect too heavily. Just going back to, or continue to do, what we do best and attack in the zone and forcing some contact.”
Martinez allowed a run in the third inning, but the Rays quickly erased that deficit in the fourth thanks to a rally led by their right-handed-hitting role players against Red Sox lefty Payton Tolle.
Ryan Vilade hit a one-out double to left field and dashed home on center fielder Cedric Mullins’ two-out single to right. Ben Williamson continued the two-out rally with an RBI double to left-center, then catcher Nick Fortes chopped another RBI double over third baseman Caleb Durbin’s head to put the Rays ahead, 3-1.
“We hung in there, and when guys got on base, for whatever reason, it seemed like our at-bats got a little bit better,” Cash said. “Really happy with the way the offense played with two outs.”
The bottom of the lineup produced what turned out to be a critical run in the sixth, when Williamson singled, Fortes was hit by a pitch, and Richie Palacios swatted another two-out single to center.
“Two-out hits and two-out RBIs are a killer for the other team,” Palacios said. “So, us being able to lock in on those at-bats right there is huge.”
Martinez finally faltered in the eighth, when Boston picked up two runs on three straight hits and put the tying run in scoring position. But it only took six pitches for Kelly, who’s been outstanding in high-leverage situations all season, to put an end to that threat.
“That's our run-stopper right there,” said Palacios, who was drawn in at second base with a runner on third when he fielded a 105.5 mph grounder for the second out behind Kelly.
That Kelly recorded two of his outs on changeups speaks to his continued evolution. Primarily a sinker/sweeper reliever early on with the Rays, the side-arming right-hander developed a changeup this season that has become his top secondary offering.
He trusted it enough to get some big outs on Tuesday night, much to the delight of everyone in Tampa Bay’s dugout -- especially Martinez.
“It's nice to have the addition of that changeup, just to have something just [with] similar movement to the sinker but just a little offspeed,” Kelly said. “That helped get those two ground balls to the lefties. Maybe I'm not even in that situation if I don't have that pitch.”