Sunday, 4 a.m.
This time, Kevin Cash could not get Blake Snell out of the game.
Too bad.
Snell, the former Rays' starter, made his old team miss him Saturday. He threw a two-hit shutout over his six innings, striking out 12 hitters, to lead the Padres to a 2-0 victory.
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Snell, whose final game as a Ray was the much-discussed game against the Dodgers in which he was pulled by Cash despite pitching a solid game, might have reminded the Rays of that. The Rays struck out 17 times in all, four of them by Randy Arozarena.
The Rays seemed overmatched most of the day. Starter Zach Eflin was solid for the Rays, giving up just four hits in his six innings.
The Padres used small ball and a leaky Rays defense to score twice in the fifth inning. Ha-Seong Kim opened the inning with a bunt single to third. Then Trent Grisham tried to bunt, but popped the ball up. It went over the head of Eflin and fell harmlessly to the turf.
Fernando Tatis Jr. bunted both runners over -- the three straight bunts being ripped out of the pages of 1912. One run scored on a sacrifice to center. The other scored when Manny Machado hit a nubber to third that Isaac Paredes could not handle.
Snell reminded thew world of how good he was in 2018, when he won the Cy Young Award in a 21-win season. In the five-plus seasons since then, however, he has won just 25 times, including only twice this year.
This time, he made it look easy.
The Rays will try to win the series today at 3:30 p.m. at Petco Park. The Rays have not announced a starter. The Padres will start Joe Musgrove.