BOSTON _ The Rays have been sorting through myriad scenarios, moving parts and potential player moves to determine how to best cover 18 innings of pitching in Saturday's doubleheader.
Yonny Chirinos made things a lot easier with a dazzling eight-inning outing on Friday in leading the Rays to a 5-1 win over the Red Sox.
Chirinos retired the first 15 Red Sox in order and allowed just two hits over his eight shutout innings, throwing 101 pitches. It was the longest start by a Ray since Jake Faria went eight on April 30, 2018. Emilio Pagan finished, keeping alive the Rays' MLB stretch of 513 games without a complete game which dates to Matt Andriese's outing on May 14, 2016.
Kevin Kiermaier made sure Chirinos he had plenty of runs to work with, knocking in four. Kiermaier singled in two runs in the fourth, singled in another in the sixth and then homered in the ninth. Ji-Man Choi also homered.
By the end of the night, the Rays won a third straight, improving to 38-23 to further distance themselves from the third-place Red Sox and try to gain ground on the AL East leading Yankees. They also posted their AL leading seventh shutout. Emilio Pagan finished, keeping alive the Rays stretch without a complete game which dates to Matt Andriese's outing on May 14, 2016.
Friday's game was the first of four the teams will play over about 45 hours during the weekend, Saturday's double duty the result of an April 26 rainout.
While some players spoke to how taxing the schedule will be, especially coming in a stretch where the Rays are playing 21 games in 20 days and 47 in 48, Rays manager Kevin Cash took a different tact.
"I look at is as a positive we get to play baseball a lot, and I think our guys are going to look at is that way," he said before the game. "We're in a better spot than we were a week ago with health. We've gotten Tommy (Pham) back (from a calf injury). We've gotten Avi (Garcia) back (from a hamstring issue). Yandy (Diaz) has come back (from a bruised hand that landed him on the injured list). Which are all good things.
"Obviously you know how capable the Red Sox are of putting up big runs in this ballpark. We want to have our best weapons offensively to go out there and kind of compete against them a little bit."
Chirinos was sharp early again Friday, throwing five hitless innings for the second time in three outings.
In the May 27 game against the Blue Jays, Cash took the chance for history out of his hands, pulling him after the fifth inning because, in walking two, he had thrown 69 pitches. That which was 20 more than his previous outing and the Rays were more concerned about managing his workload.
Friday, Chirinos was perfect through the first five innings, and efficient, throwing only 50 pitches. There was just one particularly hard hit ball, a first inning line out by Andrew Benintendi.
But the sixth didn't start well. Chirinos threw strike one, then four straight balls to Brock Holt. Two pitches later, Jackie Bradley Jr. rolled a ground ball single through the shift-opened shortstop spot for the first hit.
Chirinos got an out but then made things tougher by walking Mookie Betts. Then he came back to strike out lefty swingers Andrew Benintendi and Rafael Devers, even showing some uncharacteristic emotion on the mound.
Chirinos came into Friday's start off somewhat of a rough outing against the Twins on Saturday, allowing a career-high tying nine hits and four runs over 5 1/3 innings.
"I really look at Yonny's last outing against the Twins as a very good offense and it boiled down to two or three pitches he'd like to have back, we'd all like to have back," Cash said.
Cash outlined a strategy for Chrinos on Friday:
"(For) Yonny to have success he's going to have get the split going against the heavy lefties that Boston is featuring today so kind of create a little bit of that north-south look and get some chase below (the strike zone)."
The Rays went into play Friday with a number of options on what moves and decisions they might make to align their pitching for the split doubleheader.
Before the game, they called up Casey Sadler from Triple-A to potentially cover multiple innings and sent down Hunter Wood was sent down.
The only for sure part of the plan for Saturday was that lefty Ryan Yarbrough is slated to work the bulk of the innings in one of the games.
Which one _ the day game makes sense _ and whether he starts or works behind an opener was to be predicated on what other pitchers were used Friday.
The Rays can add a 26th man for the doubleheader, and one potential option would be to bring up Austin Pruitt to work the bulk of the innings in the other game.
But first they had to focus on Friday.
"The goal is to win tonight's game and we'll worry about tomorrow tomorrow," Cash said before the game. "You certainly have to put in the back of your minds the workload of everybody, especially your pitchers. And even your position players. We've got guys that are coming back (from injuries) that we really don't want to run out there for four games and for three days on their feet for that period of time. Everyone is going to get an opportunity to play."
