BOSTON _ Saturday didn't turn out half bad for the Rays.
With a split of their day-night doubleheader, beating the Red Sox, 9-2, in the opener and losing, 5-1, in the nightcap, plus the Yankees' loss in Cleveland, the Rays finished the night tied for first place in the American League East.
And with fewer than 100 games left in the season, that's not a bad place to be.
The first game was a good one for the Rays (39-24), with Ryan Yarbrough delivering the extremely strong start they needed by working a career-high 7 2/3 innings, and catcher Travis d'Arnaud sparking the offense with a three-run homer in the second.
The nightcap didn't go as well, as they lost 5-1.
Their offense was shut down by old friend David Price, who struck out 10 while scattering five hits over six innings for the Sox. And their pitching wasn't as crisp, as Austin Pruitt was on the mound for most of the damage.
The Sox got two in the third when rookie reliever Colin Poche allowed two singles then got two strikeouts, but Pruitt gave up a double to his first hitter, Michael Chavis. Poche ended up with the loss.
The Rays, who wasted numerous opportunities, got one back in the fifth on a Guillermo Heredia double, but Pruitt gave it right back. The Sox added two more in the sixth.
The story of the first game was the pitching of Yarbrough, his solid 7 2/3 innings a proper encore to the masterful Friday performance of Yonny Chirinos, who threw eight shutout innings.
"That was huge," manager Kevin Cash said. "He kind of picked up right where Yonny left off yesterday. We just had two really, really strong starts from some young pitchers. They go about it different ways, but Yarbs was outstanding."
Consider this: The Rays had gone 195 games, going back to April of last season, without a pitcher working as many as 7 2/3 innings, and they just did on back to back days, against the Red Sox, and in Fenway Park. Chirinos start was the longest by a Ray since Jake Faria went eight against Detroit on April 30, 2018. (The Rays haven't thrown a complete game since Matt Andriese threw one on May 14, 2016, an MLB record streak of 515 games in between.
Yarbrough was coming off a rough Sunday outing against the Twins which he acknowledged was a bit "humbling" after two strong outings after his return from Durham.
He was sharp from the start Saturday afternoon, allowing just four hits with no walks and striking out seven while throwing a career high 110 pitches, mixing and matching to keep the Sox off-balance.
"Last time, things didn't really go my way," Yarbrough said. "I kind of left some things over the plate. I really just tried to focus on really hitting corners a little bit more and still being aggressive."
Yarbrough gave d'Arnaud lots of credit for the work he did calling the game, and he had the biggest hit, too, a three-run homer in the second, that cleared the seats atop the Green Monster, an estimated 407 feet.
And that was after d'Arnaud hit two homers on Thursday, his first since before his April 2018 elbow injury, and continues a recent warming trend at the plate after extensive work with hitting coach Chad Mottola.
"He's got his timing back," Cash said.
Also, his confidence.
"It's like a big snowball," he said. "The more it rolls, the bigger it gets. That's the metaphor I'm going to try to stick by."
The Rays added a run in the second on a single by Brandon Lowe. Another in the fifth on a passed ball in what otherwise was a wasted opportunity as they had the bases loaded before and after the errant pitch and got nothing else. And then four in the ninth, starting with Lowe executing the first-and-third bunt play, scoring d'Arnaud. Ji-Man Choi, Yandy Diaz and Kevin Kiermaier followed with RBI singles.
The Rays had reason to enjoy the win, as it was their fourth straight after four losses, it was their franchise-best fifth straight over the Red Sox at Fenway and it vaulted them, temporarily anyway, into first place in the AL East, ahead of the Yankees, who lost at Cleveland.
"Absolutely," Yarbrough said. "Especially doing it here at Fenway. They're a really good team. They were World Champs last year for a reason. And they're not going to go anywhere down the stretch. You've got to take it that we've got to win every game possible against those teams, them and the Yankees. And we're just trying to do that."
As much as the Rays did right in the opener, they made their share of mistakes, having runners thrown out at first, Willy Adames, who rounded too far on a popup that wasn't caught; Yandy Diaz, who tried unsuccessfully to turn a single into a double; and third, as Pham tried to move up on a run-scoring single. When Adames was then thrown out at the plate in the nightcap, the Rays completed an odd kind of cycle.
They also made two errors, by middle infielders Lowe and Adames.
