The Rays Just Completed Their Fourth Consecutive Sweep And Have Tied The MLB Record Of 13 Straight Wins To Begin a Season

Mike Ehrmann. Getty Images.

The Tampa Bay Rays remain unstoppable. The word 'unstoppable' is not exaggerated in that sentence either. The Rays have yet to be thwarted in the 2023 MLB season thus far to the point where they've tied an MLB record. It's ridiculous. 

Now the '87 Brewers only ended up winning 91 games and finished in 3rd in their division. The Braves won the NL West but got swept in the NLCS by St. Louis.  Peaking early? Seems foolish if you ask me. 

And yeah I know they played four projected last place teams in the A's, Nats, Tigers, and Red Sox, but 13-0 is 13-0. It's baseball, anything can happen on any given day. For example starting pitcher Jeffrey Springs left today's game early on with a left arm injury. Boston jumped on the incoming reliever and took the lead. Final score? 9-3 Rays. 

Side note: Cora absolutely fumbled this game away in the 5th. Two out, two on with the lead and Brandon Lowe at the plate. Lowe 0-5 vs. Corey Kluber  with 5 strikeouts in his career, including 2ks in the game already. Cora yanked his starter for Richard Bleier who proceeded to give away the game. No telling if they escape this and go onto win, but there was no turning back here. 

Included in all that was this bunt

Can't expect the Red Sox to know what to do there, but goddamn will someone fucking beat this team? 

Back to the Rays as a whole. Here's the the most impressive part of the streak. The Rays are outscoring their opponents 101-30. ONE HUNDRED AND ONE TO THIRTY. Only twice has a game been decided by three runs or less. That's psychotic. They give up next to nothing and then absolutely bludgeon you to death with their bats. Is their offense sustainable? I'd confidently vote no although the lineup is full of pests, but their pitching is elite and will remain that way. It honestly doesn't even matter who they throw out there, it'll work. Down goes Springs today, tomorrow they'll create a new weapon in their factory that obliterates opponent's bats. Just yesterday they debuted Taj Bradley, their number one overall prospect (top 20 in all of baseball). They just keep pumping out arms and quite frankly I'm sick of it. 

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Looking ahead the Rays now travel up north to face the Blue Jays. There they will encounter Berrios and Kikuchi for the first two games. This could easily be 15 games heading into Sunday when we get Manoah vs. McClanahan. Someone please for the love of god man up and score more runs than them.