The Tampa Bay Rays have been road warriors of late, traveling to New York, Toronto, Texas, and now to Cleveland on their path to the postseason, as they take on the Cleveland Indians in Wednesday night's American League Wild Card game.
"I packed for Boston," Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon said to USA Today after winning their tiebreaker game against the Texas Rangers Monday night, confident they can continue their long road trip.
Tampa Bay forced an extra regular season game against Texas - beating them 5-2 Monday night, in a tight wild card race that featured six teams, at one point, vying for two playoff spots. Maddon believes that the grueling chase for the American League Wild Card spot prepared his team for the one-game playoff series against Cleveland.
"We've already played this wild-card game a couple times," said Maddon at Tuesday's press conference. "We did it in Toronto a couple days ago. We did it yesterday in Texas, and we're going to come here tomorrow and do it again. I don't know if there's a battle-tested component to that, if you get immune to whatever that pressure is and you go play."
Continuing their road trip will not be easy for the Rays, facing a Cleveland team riding a ten-game win streak coming into the playoffs, going 21-6 in the month of September. Cleveland's pitching paved the way, with their staffing owning a 3.16 ERA since the All-Star break - second best in the American League and fourth best in baseball.
Cleveland will send rookie Danny Salazar to the mound in the win-or-go home playoff game. Salazar began the year in Double-A Akron and was called up in July, going 2-3 with a 3.12 ERA in 10 starts, averaging 11.25 strikeouts per nine innings, a 1.13 WHIP, and 65/15 K/BB ratio over 52 innings.
"Danny has done nothing to make us think he can't handle this," said Cleveland manager Terry Francona. "He's so poised. If I had stuff like him, I'd be poised, too. But there's a difference between throwing 100 mph and being able to get major league hitters out. Danny can do that."
The Rays will start Alex Cobb, who went 11-3 for the season with a 2.76 ERA. Cobb missed 50 games this season due to a concussion injury after being struck in the head by a line drive back in June, going 5-1 with a 2.41 ERA since returning from his injury.
"He pitched extremely well once again," said Maddon. "I think he was having a hard time command-wise with the changeup early. Then he started using his fastball more, which I thought was a great move. But overall, a fantastic performance."
TV Schedule
You can catch the Tampa Bay Rays-Cleveland Indians American League Wild-card game Wednesday night 8:05 p.m EST on TBS.
Live Stream (video)
Live stream coverage can be seen on MLB.tv.
Live Stream (audio)
Live stream coverage can be heard MLB.com Gameday Audio.
Live Score
Live scores could be followed by clicking here.
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