ST. PETERSBURG Mikkel Boedker Jersey , Fla. — Tampa Bay’s continued experimentation with relievers as starters has had mixed results, but it helped the Rays beat the best team in baseball on Friday night, and they’ll hope for the same formula as the series continues Saturday at Tropicana Field.
“It’s a little backwards, a little different, but it is what it is,” Yankees‘ Brett Gardner said after Friday’s 2-1 win for the Rays.
On Saturday, the Rays will start reliever Wilmer Font (0-3, 7.56 ERA), who is already with his third team in 2018, but has found surprising success growing into the unusual role. In six June appearances, he has managed to last longer in each outing — 2/3 of an inning, then 1 1/3, then 2, then 2 1/3, then 3 1/3, and then 4 2/3 on Sunday against the same Yankees.
Font lasted one out shorter than the minimum needed for a win but held the Yankees to one run and four hits, striking out five. The same pitcher who had an 11.68 ERA in April and a 10.80 ERA in May now has a 2.51 ERA in June.
The Rays might not have a majority of fans in their own stadium, but they’re finding ways to win.
“They were pretty loud,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said of the Yankees fans on Friday night. “We’ve played the Yankees and Red Sox quite a bit, and they have a lot of fans who travel with them. I thought the loudest moment was when we got the final out, and that’s what we were concerned about. Our fans showed up and supported us.”
If the Rays want to win again Saturday, they’ll have to do so against another pitcher who has gotten steadily better as the season has progressed. Sonny Gray (5-4, 4.8) hasn’t faced the Rays yet this season, but he’s 3-4 in his career against Tampa Bay with a 4.26 ERA Tim Heed Jersey , including a 4.32 in four starts last year.
Gray had a 6.67 ERA in April, then a 5.16 ERA in May. For June, his ERA stands at 2.63. Gray has allowed only seven earned runs in 24 innings.
The Rays put together 10 hits on Friday, but got nothing from one of their best hitters.
Kevin Kiermaier went 0-for-4 to drop to 0-for-13 since his return from the disabled list. The Rays did get three hits from catcher Wilson Ramos, who has stepped into the American League lead in All-Star voting among catchers.
Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez, next in the All-Star voting, went 0-for-4 to drop his season average to .194. Ramos may get traded before this year’s deadline, but he’s making the most of his time with the Rays.
No one will confuse the Yankees (50-23) with the Rays (35-40), but another bullpen day Saturday could flummox a New York batting order that managed only five hits Friday. And when they did get hits, the Yankees couldn’t capitalize and went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
After the Rays dropped their first six games against the Yankees this season, they have won two straight as they try to again claw back to playing .500 baseball.
In a story March 5 about the Super Bowl DVD, The Associated Press reported the site of NFL Films as Mount Royal, New Jersey. The correct site is Mount Laurel, New Jersey.
A corrected version of the story is below:
PHI-NALLY: An Oscar winner in Philadelphia?
Putting together a documentary of a Super Bowl season is an extensive and exhausting project
By BARRY WILNER
AP Sports Writer
Putting together a documentary of a Super Bowl season is an extensive and exhausting project.
Except when it becomes a labor of love.
For dozens of employees at NFL Films, the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles season was particularly special. Thus, the DVD that chronicles it and becomes available to the public on Tuesday – PHI-NALLY is how it is dubbed – wasn’t exactly work.
”We are in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, which is about 20 minutes from the Linc,” says Todd Schmidt, who produces such enterprises for NFL Films. ”So many of our people are lifelong fans of the Eagles, who have suffered for all those years. And that is something the becomes part of the film; we wanted people out there to understand what some of these people went through during that crazy game and this season.
”I would love for an Arizona Cardinals fan to get the same bang out of this as my 22-year-old son and a lifelong Eagles fan will, and I like to think that the story will do that. This is more than a story of a football season. It’s about why teams and fans don’t quit, and that’s what Philly fans are like. They may get a lot of criticism, but there’s a reason Rocky means so much and showing the heart to never give up means so much.”
NFL Films had the good fortune of being able to place microphones on coach Doug Pederson and quarterback Nick Foles. The exchanges between them not only are insightful football-wise Tomas Hertl Jersey , they provide a window into the aggressiveness that was so critical to not only upending the Patriots in a classic Super Bowl, but in the Eagles putting together such a successful season.
Indeed, Philadelphia’s 41-33 victory in Minneapolis probably made for a much more enchanting story than had the Patriots won. After all, New England taking the NFL title is anything but new, and the Eagles last won it in 1960, when Norm Van Brocklin was the quarterback and Chuck Bednarik was playing linebacker and center.
So Schmidt opted to open the documentary with a shot of Franklin Field on the University of Pennsylvania campus – the site of that 1960 win over Green Bay. And he decided to close the film with the parade witnessed by more than 700,000 ”so you get a clear idea of what this meant to the city of Philadelphia, the people of Philadelphia, and to Eagles fans.”
NFL Films actually makes two 55-minute films annually. The 2017 version of the Patriots’ season ”will not see the light of day,” Schmidt explains. But it also would have had plenty of cachet.
”I think every team has a story,” he says, though how many viewers would be interested in, say, the Browns‘ 0-16 campaign is debatable.
”Had the Patriots won, it would have been a film of dominance; if they had won they would have been the `27 Yankees. It would have been magnificent if they had pulled out that game, two of the most amazing Super Bowls back to back. Tom Brady would go down as the greatest magician ever to walk the earth.
”We are storytellers and we would have made the elements we had work well.”
Still, the elements they had on Philadelphia’s side certainly seem more compelling. A team loses five key players, including late in the schedule the QB who appeared headed to league MVP honors. It’s an underdog in all of its postseason games despite being a top seed. Its history of falling short is monumental.
And then it wins a classic Super Bowl against an NFL dynasty.
”The Eagles story has a lot more historical context, which is red meat to a storyteller,” Schmidt says. ”The more context and unique elements of the story, the better the story. So I loved the Eagles story.”
As did so many of his co-workers.
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