After a controversial afternoon the Tampa Bay Rays went out Friday night and rallied back to a 9-7 victory over the Chicago White Sox. Friday afternoon slugger Manny Ramirez decided to retire rather than face a 100 game suspension for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy for the second time.  

Going into the ninth inning it looked like the Rays were on their way for their seventh loss. It all changed very quickly with an Alexi Ramirez throwing error which scored Elliot Johnson from second and began the rally. Juan Pierre then dropped a fly ball to left off of Johnny Damon’s bat putting runners on first and second, for B.J. Upton. Upton then hit an RBI single to left to make it a one-run game. 

Dan Johnson then took the first pitch of the at-bat to deep right for a home run to make it a 9-7 game.  

Kyle Farnsworth then proceded to shut down the White Sox for the Rays first win of the season.  

James Shields had a rough outting tonight against the White Sox allowing five runs and eight hits. He was taken out in the seventh with no one out and two runners on. 

Joel Peralta came on and had another dominating outting while not letting a runner cross the plate. During Peralta’s relief appearance catcher Kelly Shoppach was taken out of the game with a sore right knee and was replaced by John Jaso.

The Rays called up first baseman Casey Kotchman to take Manny’s spot on the roster. Hopefully this win will spark the Rays to start stringing some wins together.

Reach Shane Miller at millershane32@yahoo.com , or visit his website, www.ballgametalk.com. Also feel free to interact with him on twitter @ShaneMiller27.

Tags: Dan Johnson, James Shields, Manny Ramirez, Tampa Bay Rays

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 9th, 2011 at 4:39 am and is filed under Rays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.