Enjoying a rarity: quality victories

RAYS 6, JAYS 4: Tampa Bay puts it all together for a second straight game.

By MARC TOPKIN, Times Staff Writer

© St. Petersburg Times
published June 28, 2002

ST. PETERSBURG -- The Rays win so rarely that back-to-back victories are a milestone. They'd done it only once since mid May, and just nine times all season.

But to beat the Blue Jays the way they did Wednesday night and again Thursday afternoon -- an entertaining 6-4 final that fea-tured an impressive comeback, quality pitching, solid defense and clutch hitting -- was essentially a monumental accomplishment.

"This is what we've been waiting for," manager Hal McRae said. "This is what we've been looking for all year."

Most times when the Rays have won this season, it has been because they have done fewer things poorly than they did well. But what has McRae excited is the way they've done most everything right the past two games, the two days after a massive roster shakeup and an embarrassing 20-11 defeat.

"I hope that this means we've meshed as a club even though we've only played two games," McRae said. "It's a matter of being consistent with it now. We fell behind, we fought back and took the lead, the bullpen came in and did a good job. It seems like we're putting things together."

The success shows up in the win-loss column and the results log, as the Rays won a series for only the second time this month, and their first at home since early May.

But it also shows somewhere more important, on the faces of the players who have to live with being overmatched and underequipped on nearly a nightly basis.

"It's fun to come to the field and play a solid game all the way around," Brent Abernathy said. "You're able to leave the stadium with a good feeling and come to the stadium the next day with a positive mind-set and a great feeling about the way the club has played."

"It's fun again," Steve Cox said, "coming to the park, joking around, enjoying each other's company."

The matinee follow-up to Wednesday's 4-2 come-from-behind victory didn't start well. After allowing just a walk and a single in the first three innings, Paul Wilson gave up a leadoff homer to Raul Mondesi and a two-run homer to Jose Cruz, his sixth in 10 games against the Rays, in the fourth. A bases-loaded walk to Cruz in a messy fifth made it 4-0 with Toronto pitcher Chris Carpenter looking as dominant as he had in beating the Rays five times in eight previous games.

"It would have been easy to kind of say, "Grrr, here we go again,"' Randy Winn said.

Instead, they got going.

A Ben Grieve single and another Aubrey Huff home run, his second in two games and seventh in a 98 at-bat span, made it 4-2. And a double by John Flaherty and a two-out single on a 0-and-2 pitch by Winn, who set a team monthly record with 39 hits, narrowed the margin to one by the end of the fifth.

They struck again in the seventh. With Chris Gomez and Winn aboard and one out, Abernathy lined a single into left-center to tie the score.

Lefty Scott Eyre came on to face the trio of left-handed hitters in the middle of the Tampa Bay order, but didn't get far as Cox lashed the first pitch to left-center for a two-run double and a 6-4 lead. Wednesday, the Jays brought in lefty Felix Heredia and Cox tied it with a sacrifice fly and Huff put the Rays ahead with a homer.

"Our left-handed hitters are doing a tremendous job against left-handed pitching," McRae said. "They've taken care of the left-handed pitchers when they've brought them in."

While the Rays hitters chipped away, Travis Harper did a superb job of keeping the Jays down. Harper worked three perfect innings, striking out five straight, to earn the win and the praise of his teammates and coaches.

"He's been the bright spot in the pen," McRae said. "He's done a great job."

Harper took the Rays to the ninth, and Esteban Yan did the rest. Sure, he had to survive a one-out single and dodge a broken bat on Shannon Stewart's game-ending ground out, but he too got the job done. For the Rays, it was a rare complete game.

"It's nice to see the players having fun again," McRae said. "There's a lot of games left and we need to continue to play the way we've played."