Pham, Meadows lead Rays to comeback win over L.A.

by Gary Shelton on September 19, 2019 · 0 comments

in general

Pham had five hits for the Rays./STEVEN MUNCIE

Thursday, 4 a.m.

Maybe this was the key  for the Tampa Bay Rays taking one of their biggest wins of the year Wednesday night.

Maybe they were scared not to.

After all, Tommy Pham, the man with the scowl, had scolded the whole bunch of them after a loss to the Dodgers Tuesday night. Whatever, Pham got his teammates' attention, who came from behind to take an 8-7 win over the Dodgers, the best team in the National League. The game took 11 innings to finish.

Pham had stressed the importance of these games to his teammates the night before, then led them by getting five hits in six at-bats Thursday.

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Meadows hit his 32nd home run./TIM WIRT

“We had a ton of fight tonight," Pham said. "I think everyone saw it. And off a good pitcher, too. We kept fighting, and we didm't give up. We had a lot of resiliency.

"Anytime you get five hits, you need some luck. I had some luck tonight. I hit a couple of balls hard, but I had some luck."

The Rays trailed 6-4 gong into the ninth inning, but they scored twice  off a single by Ji-Man Choi and a sacrifice fly by Travis d'Arnaud.  They scored twice more in the 11th on  Austin Meadows' 32nd homer and a sacrifice fly by Choi.

Cash had a clue as to why Meadows came up big.

"Just the  consistency with which he does it," Cash said. "He’s picked us up all year, really, really big as of late. The last month he’s kind of carried us with his bat, and he did again tonight with that big hit."

The Dodgers threatened in the bottom of the inning, but scored just once.

The Rays used nine pitchers in their win. Colin Poche got the win and Pete Fairbanks got the save.

Tampa Bay has now won its last five extra-inning games and eight of its last nine one-run games.

The Rays have today off, then open a four-game series against the Boston Red Sox at the Trop on Friday. Charlie Morton will pitch against Rick Porcello at 7:10 p.m.

 

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