Just For Starters: Drew Rasmussen Goes 5 Innings in Longest Start of Season For Rays
CHICAGO, Ill. — Drew Rasmussen went five innings for Tampa Bay on Friday night, and that was the longest outing of the year for a Rays starter.
He allowed three runs, one each in the second, third and fifth innings.
His first run allowed came in the second inning, when a two-out, two-strike breaking ball in the dirt got past catcher Francisco Mejia for a wild pitch, with Gavin Sheets, who had doubled, scoring from third.
He gave up a long 430-foot home run to Jake Burger in the third, and it looked like the White Sox were starting to figure him out. He got the next three hitters out, but they all hit fly balls to the warning track that were caught by Rays center fielder Kevin Kiermaier.
In the fifth, Leury Garcia, who was 0-for-18 at the time, doubled and scorerd on a Burger single. The Rays did score twice in the bottom of the inning, so Rasmussen left trailing 3-2.
Here's our "Just For Starters'' daily story breaking down the Rays' starting pitcher, with cumulative numbers for all the starters, now through seven games.
Rays' Starters By The Numbers
- Starter: Drew Rasmussen
- Game: Friday at Chicago White Sox
- Decision: Loss, 0-1
- Team result: Lost 3-2, now 4-4 on the season
- Innings pitched: 5.0
- Total pitches: 68
- Strikes: 47
- Runs allowed: 3
- Earned runs: 3
- Hits allowed: 5
- Walks allowed: 0
- Total HBP allowed: 0
- Total strikeouts: 2
- Status upon departure: Rasmussen finished the fifth inning, the first Rays starter to do so all season. He was replaced by Jason Adam to start the sixth. The Rays scored twice in the bottom of the fifth to make it 3-2.
- The skinny: Rasmussen got hit hard at times, and was fortunate that a lot of those warning-track fly balls were knocked down by the right-to-left wind at Guaranteed Rate Park.
Season Totals for Rays Starters
- Starters: Shane McClanahan (2), Drew Rasmussen (2), Corey Kluber, Luis Patino, Tommy Romero, Josh Fleming
- Games: 8
- Decisions: 0-2 thru Wednesday
- Team result: 4-2 thru Wednesday
- Innings pitched (avg.): 28.1/3.5
- - Season high innings: 5, Drew Rasmussen (April 15)
- - Season low innings: 2/3, Luis Patino (April 11)
- Total pitches (avg.): 501/62.8
- - Season high pitches: 87, Corey Kluber (April 10)
- - Season low pitches: 13, Luis Patino (April 11)
- Strikes (avg.): 324/40.5
- Total strikeouts (avg.): 32/4.0
- - Season high strikeouts: 8, Shane McClanahan (April 13)
- Runs allowed (avg.): 17/2.1
- Earned runs (avg.): 15/1.8
- Hits allowed (avg.): 27/3.3
- Walks allowed (avg.): 16/2.0
- Total HBP allowed (avg.): 2/0.2
- Starter ERA: 4:76
Tom Brew is the publisher of Inside The Rays, and has been with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation network for three years. He is an award-winning writer and editor who has spent most of his four-decade career at the Tampa Bay Times, Indianapolis Star and South Florida Sun-Sentinel. He has written four books.