Rays 3 Dodgers 7: Ohtani joins the 40-40 club

Ohtani is great, the Rays are not, but a few bright spots for 2025 shown through

The good from tonight’s game: The Rays offense had a few more hits, got two nice HRs from players who are going to be a part of the near future, bullpen continued to be exciting, and they made the much, MUCH better Dodgers team sweat.

The bad: they ultimately got beat because Enrique Hernandez, who has not had a positive impact since he went full Barry Bonds vs the Rays in the 2021 ALDS, had a game tying 3 run HR.

You do not deserve to win a major league baseball game in the year of our Lord 2024 when you give up monster dongs to Enrique Hernandez.

Junior Caminero had a good game. Hit this pretty oppo field HR to give the Rays a lead:

On the day, Junior Caminero had the 1st, 3rd, and 4th hardest hit balls of the day (Ohtani having the 2nd hardest) with Exit Velocity of:

112.6 MPH (groundout to rob an RBI)

111 MPH (Double)

109.2 (HR)

Pretty, pretty good right there.

Another member of the 2025 Rays to watch out for, Christopher Morel has an electric personality and it’s very easy to root for him to succeed. It’s not been an easy start with the Rays, and overall this has been a struggle of a season for him. But the bat talent is there. The elite bat speed is there. The effortless power is there. And tonight, Morel flashed all of that to extend the Rays lead to 3-0.

Afterward, Morel and Siri continued their ever increasing elaborate handshakes:

By next year, I’m expected the equivalent of a Simone Biles floor routine after a HR from these two.

The last positive moment came in the 8th where Brandon Lowe collected his 500th hit with an opposite field double:

The Rays would not score there, and throughout the game really ever truly threaten to score outside of the bombs, because they are very bad at hitting and offense. Dodgers, on the other hand, are very good at every aspect of baseball and you could tell they were almost insulted they had to play the bottom of the 9th.

Manny Rodriguez fulfilled a Chris Rock dream of hitting Will Smith, and then gave up a base hit to Tommy Edman. After an incredible infield in catch from Brandon Lowe to keep the game alive and get the Rays within 1 out of forcing extras. However, the Rays knew the outcome and delaying the inevitable just prevents an earlier bedtime.

Kevin Cash called on Colin Poche to finish this sucker right there in the 9th. A quick and fully unserious 5 pitch walk to Max Muncy loaded the bases for the greatest baseball talent on the planet who took 1 pitch to send the LA fans home happy and send the Rays back to .500 for the 57th* time this season (*it’s late and I’m not looking up how many times they have actually hit .500 but it’s a lot)

Only 34 more games left of this until we are free.