Cash makes his point before being tossed./JEFFREY S. KING
Wednesday, 3 p.m.
In hindsight, maybe the Tampa Bay Rays were worried about the wrong starting pitcher.
Turns out, it was Shane Bieber, not Corey Kluber, who shut down the Rays like a Cy Young award candidate.
Bieber struck out 11 Rays in 6 2/3 innings of three-hit, shutout baseball Tuesday night to end the Rays’ 12-game home winning streak. Tampa Bay managed only four hits in a 2-0 loss, and ended up striking out 13 times. In two games, Cleveland pitchers have struck out 29.
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Glasnow pitched well, but homers doomed him./JEFFREY S. KING
”He was dealing better today,” said Willy Adames. “He was mixing the pitches pretty good today. I think his sinker was doing pretty good today. He had a great command of the ball today. Sometimes you have to give it to the guy.”
Wendle had a double and a single./JEFFREY S. KING
Bieber out-dueled the Rays’ Tyler Glasnow, who allowed two solo homers — to Yon Gomes in the fifth and to Edwin Encarnacion in the sixth. Glasnow is now 0-4 with the Rays, but he has had two runs or fewer in support in all eight of his starts.
Nine of the 21 runs that Glasnow has allowed have come from the home run.
“It was good to see Glasnow bounce back,” said Rays’ manager Kevin Cash. “That was really really impressive on his part. Just filled up the strike zone. That’s what we ask our guys to do. I know he got ambushed with one home run and then Yan Gomes had a tremendous at-bat and got a curveball. I thought Tyler was outstanding. Really impressed with the way he bounced back from a rough outing in Toronto.
Tommy Pham plays the ball off the wall./JEFFREY S. KING
"Their guy (Bieber) was just as good, probably a tick better. He had a lot of fastball life. He was able to get a lot of backfoot slider swing-and-miss and takes on his breaking ball. A well-pitched game all in all. We just came up short.”
Glasnow was encouraged that his outing was better than his previous one.
“A lot of it was getting ahead of hitters,” Glasnow said. “I think early on the breaking ball and the slider were better than they were later, but I think just establishing that I could throw a first strike later on let me get away with stuff.”
Glasnow couldn’t offer an explanation why his velocity was down.
Lowe makes a play at second for Rays./JEFFREY S. KING
“Just one of those days,” he said. “I don’t know. I was really only working with fastball and the changeup helped me out today. The put-away stuff wasn’t there with the curveball and the slider today. Like I said too, that’s definitely when you need to get ahead of hitters. I had that working for me tonight.”
Cash was ejected in the eighth inning after a balk call against Vidal Nuno.
“Just coming out," Cash said of why he was ejected. "I knew that, but I just wanted some clarification whether balk or not. Probably not the biggest fan of that rule. I’m just looking for clarification. I don’t think that warrants an ejection, but I understand the rule is in place and I have to follow them and I didn’t.”
Joey Wendle had two hits for Tampa Bay. Tommy Pham kept his 15-game hitting streak alive.
Blake Snell pitches for the Rays in the series finale today at 1 p.m. Carlos Carrasco pitches for Cleveland.
Adames hurdles a runner to try to get double play./JEFFREY S. KING
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