Rays go from being no-hit to scoring 10 runs ... in same frame

CHICAGO -- Over the course of a six-month baseball season, teams are going to experience games where it’s just not their night.

But the Rays -- in the midst of one of the best starts in baseball history -- are doing their best to defy that truism. Just look at what happened Saturday night at Guaranteed Rate Field on the South Side of Chicago.

After getting no-hit by Lance Lynn for six innings, the Rays motored back with a 10-run seventh in a 12-3 win over the White Sox -- improving their MLB-best record to 23-5.

“That was the strategy we came up with early in the game,” Randy Arozarena joked through interpreter Manny Navarro. “To not get a hit in six innings and then just explode in the seventh inning on.”

It proved to be a sound strategy. According to Elias, in the expansion era (since 1961), only one other team that was being no-hit through 6+ innings scored 10+ runs in the inning in which they broke up the no-hit bid.

On Sept. 11, 2021, the Blue Jays scored 11 times in the top of the seventh, in Game 2 of a scheduled seven-inning doubleheader, after being no-hit by Keegan Akin through six innings.

The Rays sent 14 hitters to the plate in the seventh, tallying nine hits -- five for extra bases. They scored seven runs with two outs, but Wander Franco sparked it all leading off the frame.

“A lot of motivation for us,” Arozarena said of Franco’s solo homer that got the Rays in the hit and run columns.

Franco’s walk in the first inning amounted to Tampa Bay’s only traffic against Lynn through the first six innings. He led off the seventh, fell behind 0-2 and jumped all over a 92.4 mph fastball Lynn left over the heart of the plate, sending it over the left-field fence.

“That's like, ‘All right, we kind of opened it up. Here we go,’” Josh Lowe said. “That was huge for him. Even a blooper there would have done the same thing [for our dugout], but for him to put it over the fence, that was a great start.”

Arozarena followed Franco’s home run with a strikeout, but the next 11 Rays reached base (including Francisco Mejía’s fielders’ choice, when the White Sox threw a runner out at the plate).

“That's pretty good,” manager Kevin Cash said of the offensive outburst. “When you knock 10 across in one inning, you’ve got to be doing a lot of things right. Everybody contributed with just a bunch of good at-bats against a handful of pretty good relievers.”

Arozarena and Lowe also hit home runs in the seventh, going back to back in their second plate appearances of the inning. Arozarena’s homer traveled 433 feet and left his bat 111.8 mph, both the highest tallies of any batted ball on the night. He went deep again in the ninth, too.

Franco’s second trip up was perhaps the most impressive of the frame. He fouled off seven straight pitches before hitting a two-run single.

“He had a good day at the plate, no doubt,” Cash said. “He saw the ball well. He got pitched really, really tough, but he stayed at it. The home run, the base hit up the middle. He just missed another homer [in the eighth]. He seems to be pretty locked in right now.”

The Rays offense is far and away the MLB leader in run differential (+106), so they’ve already been showing how dangerous they are this season. Saturday was just the latest example.

“It shows we have a lot of talented players here, really good players here,” Franco said through Navarro. “We don't ever give up. We work hard, and it doesn't matter who the manager puts in. We're all ready to go.”

The Rays haven’t had to come from behind too often this season, but they did Saturday. They also trailed the White Sox by three runs on April 21, when they scored three times in the ninth to walk off.

“Any given night, we're going to show up and we’re going to put our best foot forward,” Lowe said. “We've got a chance to win any single ballgame we play. We believe that, we know that, and that's what we're going to keep doing.”