Shane McClanahan put on another show Tuesday.
And the Tampa Bay Rays put up another win, beating Joe Maddon’s Los Angeles Angels 8-3.
The hard-throwing lefty from the University of South Florida dazzled again in his second start, showing off his blazing fastball and biting slider in working four shutout innings.
McClanahan allowed two hits and two walks, retiring 10 straight in one stretch, striking out five, while throwing 44 of 63 pitches for strikes.
Luis Patino worked three innings, allowing only a homer to Mike Trout. Cody Reed surrendered two runs on two singles and a walk in the eighth. Hunter Strickland finished for the Rays, who won their third straight and climbed back above .500 at 16-15. The Rays also improved to 30-12 in Anaheim since the start of 2010 and assured, at the least, a 12th non-losing series in their last 13.
Austin Meadows led the way offensively for the Rays with two homers, giving him a team-leading seven, and five RBIs.
The eight runs, their most since April 21, were welcome for a Rays offense that has been better of late but still not fully clicking. And they came with help from the poor-fielding Angels, who made four errors to push their American League-leading total to 29, and made several other misplays.
Ex-Ray Alex Cobb, reunited with Maddon after a February trade from Baltimore, started and lost for the Angels, working five innings.
The Rays are handling McClanahan, who just turned 24, cautiously by limiting his workload, and he has made the most of his limited opportunity.
He clocked five pitches at 100 mph (with a high of 100.6, twice in the first inning), and six others at 99. He got 10 swing-and misses. He struck out both of the Angels’ biggest names, Trout and Albert Pujols, and made two-way standout Shohei Ohtani look bad in swinging at a slider before he flied out in the third.
The Rays took a 1-0 lead in the first thanks to some shoddy defense by the Angels.
Manuel Margot reached with two outs when shortstop Jose Iglesias booted his grounder, then scored from first when Brandon Lowe’s hard grounder was, literally, kicked by second baseman David Fletcher.
The Rays made it 2-0 in the fifth when they took advantage of another Angels mistake. Randy Arozarena led off the fifth with a single off Cobb, then stole second and went straight to third when catcher Max Stassi made an errant throw. That allowed Arozarena to score on Meadows’ groundout to the right side.
The Rays doubled their lead in the sixth. Yandy Diaz, continuing his recent roll, and Joey Wendle singled off ex-Ray Steve Cishek. Another defensive misplay, a passed ball by Stassi, with one out allowed the runners to move up. And a bouncing ball by Kevin Kiermaier that somehow got between Fletcher and first baseman Pujols scored both.
After the Angels closed to 4-1 on Trout’s homer off Patino in the sixth, the Rays got a run back when Meadows hit his team-leading sixth homer to lead off the seventh. Meadows struck again with a three-run shot in the eighth.
The starting pitching matchup of McClanahan and Cobb came with an interesting connection.
Cobb came up with the Rays and pitched six seasons in Tampa Bay, going 48-35, 3.50 in 115 starts and missing the 2015 season after undergoing Tommy John elbow surgery. He left the Rays after the 2017 season and eventually signed a big-bucks, free-agent deal with the Baltimore Orioles, getting $57 million over four years.
The Rays got an additional pick in the 2018 draft as compensation for losing Cobb and used that pick, No. 31 overall, to select McClanahan, the hard-throwing lefty from USF.
