"We're a confident team," third baseman Michael Young said. "[The Rays] are a very good team and whoever wants to go to the World Series from the American League has to go through the Rays. They are a talented club and we know they are going to be in the AL mix the whole way. The one thing we did well in this series is we pitched well."
In game 1 of the series, rookie Tommy Hunter gave Texas a big boost, going 5 1/3 innings while allowing only 1 earned run. The win, the first in his MLB career, came on his 23rd birthday.
"Their guy was deceptive, Hunter, and we had a hard time picking it up," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "Everybody came back in and had a different idea of what he was trying to do. We just had a hard time seeing the ball on him."
Hank Blalock continued his recent power surge, hitting a 2-run shot that proved to be the difference in the game.
"He made me pay," Rays starter Scott Kazmir said. "You don't throw that pitch to Blalock, anything that's hanging, anything that's up. I got away with it the first time and the second time he made me pay."
The trio of Jason Jennings, C.J. Wilson and Frank Francisco came in to pitch 3 2/3 innings of scoreless baseball with Frankie picking up his 15th save of the season.
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Game two of the Rays series saw two top pitching prospcets going head-to-head and at least this time, The Rangers Derek Holland came out on top.
Playoff hero David Price took the mound for Tampa Bay and continued his recent struggles, walking 5 and allowing 6 earned runs in 1 1/3 innings. He's now walked 30 batters in his last 38 innings.
Holland got a lot of early offense from the Texas offense and managed to hang on for the ride, going six innings, allowing 4 earned runs and striking out four.
Nelson Cruz and David Murphy combined for 6 hits and Andruw Jones added a big 3-run blast, leading Texas to an easy 12-4 victory.
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In the final game, Scott Feldman continued to do what he's been doing since joining the rotation, going 6 innings, allowing 2 earned runs and picking up yet another victory.
"[Feldman] kept the ball down," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "He's done good work this year against left-handed hitters. A lot of it looked like a backdoor cutter and then he'd get in on their hands, too. And we had a lot of jammed swings tonight."
Conversely, Rays starter Matt Garza struggled with his location, walking two and hitting another, allowing 5 earned runs over 5 innings of work.
"I went after them with my fastball," Garza said. "It's all it was, lack of command a lot. When you get behind the hitter gets in a more comfortable, confident position and gives them pitches to hit."
Texas scored all 5 of their runs in the first 4 innings of the game, 3 coming via sacrifice flies off the bats of David Murphy, Marlon Byrd and Elvis Andrus.
Ron Washington speaks a lot on the fundamentals of baseball and the Rangers, at least during the month of June, seemingly lost the abilty to play that form of baseball. Runs weren't being manufactured, men weren't being moved tp the next base but with the turn of the calender, they seem to have found their groove again.
"There's a lot of energy about them," said Maddon about the Rangers. "They're playing the game right. So they just outplayed us for three nights.
"It always starts with pitching. You either win because you pitch or you lose because you don't pitch well. And they've just been pitching well."
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