Latest news with #RyanPepiot
Al Arabiya
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Al Arabiya
Rays Get 3 Homers, Strong Start From Pepiot To Avoid Sweep With 6-5 Win Over Athletics
Josh Lowe, Yandy Díaz, and rookie Jake Mangum homered, Ryan Pepiot posted a quality start, and Tampa Bay avoided a three-game sweep with a 6–5 win over the Athletics on Wednesday afternoon. Trailing 2–1 entering the bottom of the sixth, the Rays batted around and scored five runs. Lowe's leadoff shot tied the contest, Brandon Lowe followed with a double to extend his major-league-leading hitting streak to 18 games, and Díaz put Tampa Bay ahead with a two-run homer. Pepiot (6–6) pitched six innings, allowing four hits and two runs – on Brent Rooker and Max Schuemann solo homers – walking three with nine strikeouts. He fanned five of his last six batters. Mangum got the Rays on the board with an inside-the-park homer, crushing a slider to the deepest part of the park just out of reach of center fielder Denzel Clarke. The first such homer by a Rays player in two years, it was the 24th in franchise history. Max Muncy also homered for the As, which got three hits from Schuemann. Second baseman Luis Urías departed in the sixth with right hamstring tightness. Key moment Down 6–2 entering the ninth, the As quickly scored three runs. With Rays closer Pete Fairbanks unavailable after pitching the last two days, Edwin Uceta loaded the bases with one out, then fanned Rooker and Nick Kurtz to end the game for his first save of the season. Key stat Rays pitchers recorded a season-best 17 strikeouts one day after fanning 15 Athletics on Tuesday night. Up next The As return home to face the Giants on Friday, starting LHP JP Sears (6–7, 5.09). San Francisco is undecided on its starter. Tampa Bay begins a 10-game road trip at Minnesota on Friday with RHP Zack Littell (7–7, 3.61 ERA) on the mound. The Twins have yet to announce a starter.
Associated Press
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Associated Press
Rays get 3 homers, strong start from Pepiot to avoid sweep with 6-5 win over Athletics
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Josh Lowe, Yandy Díaz and rookie Jake Mangum homered, Ryan Pepiot posted a quality start and Tampa Bay avoided a three-game sweep with a 6-5 win over the Athletics on Wednesday afternoon. Trailing 2-1 entering the bottom of the sixth, the Rays batted around and scored five runs. Lowe's leadoff shot tied the contest, Brandon Lowe followed with a double to extend his major-league leading hitting streak to 18 games and Díaz put Tampa Bay ahead with a two-run homer. Pepiot (6-6) pitched six innings, allowing four hits and two runs — on Brent Rooker and Max Schuemann solo homers — walking three with nine strikeouts. He fanned five of his last six batters. Mangum got the Rays on the board with an inside-the-park homer, crushing a slider to the deepest part of the park, just out of reach of center fielder Denzel Clarke. The first such homer by a Rays player in two years, it was the 24th in franchise history. Max Muncy also homered for the A's, which got three hits from Schuemann. Second baseman Luis Urías departed in the sixth with right hamstring tightness. Key moment Down 6-2 entering the ninth, the A's quickly scored three runs. With Rays closer Pete Fairbanks unavailable after pitching the last two days, Edwin Uceta loaded the bases with one out, then fanned Rooker and Nick Kurtz to end the game for his first save of the season. Key stat Rays pitchers recorded a season-best 17 strikeouts, one day after fanning 15 Athletics on Tuesday night. Up next The A's return home to face the Giants on Friday, starting LHP JP Sears (6-7, 5.09). San Francisco is undecided on its starter. Tampa Bay begins a 10-game road trip at Minnesota on Friday, with RHP Zack Littell (7-7, 3.61 ERA) on the mound. The Twins have yet to announce a starter. ___ AP MLB:
New York Times
a day ago
- Climate
- New York Times
Sweat science: MLB players, teams devise methods to stay cool as temperatures rise
In between innings on the mound, Tampa Bay Rays starter Ryan Pepiot disappears into the dugout tunnel and parks himself near a portable air conditioning unit prepared for the right-hander's arrival. He places his pitching hand inside a device designed to cool his body's core temperature. With his left hand, he hydrates. First he sips from a bottle that is 'very salty and doesn't taste great,' he said. After the first out is recorded, he switches to a more appetizing mixture that includes DripDrop electrolyte packets. Advertisement Pepiot developed this routine last summer. It has become even more imperative with his team spending this season playing in the sweltering humidity of Tampa's George M. Steinbrenner Field. He used to finish the two bottles every four innings. Now he estimates he is consuming nearly twice as much. 'They've had to make extra ones for me this year,' Pepiot said. Unlike the other major North American sports — and European soccer — baseball plays the heart of its season under the summer sun, putting it in a uniquely difficult position as those summers continue to get hotter. As June now turns to July, baseball players across the country are dealing with different versions of the same question: How do you stay cool in this heat? Or, more to the point, how do you keep playing without cramping and vomiting? There are devices like the CoolMitt and regular hydration tests. There are precise instructions for how to consume liquids. There are ways to train your body to prepare for the elements. But sometimes, the best approach is the simple one: 'Drink as much water as possible and pray to God it's enough,' Rays starter Drew Rasmussen said. The heat has begun to make its mark on this season. Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz vomited in the outfield on a 96-degree late June afternoon in St. Louis. A day later, Detroit Tigers starter Casey Mize exited an outing in Tampa while suffering from cramps. The Atlanta Braves visited Citi Field last week in the midst of an East Coast heat wave that saw temperatures surpass 100 in certain parts of New York. A video board in the New York Mets clubhouse featured an illustration of a droplet with a two-word admonition: DRINK WATER. That was what Braves starter Spencer Schwellenbach did before facing the Mets a week ago Monday in the teeth of the heat wave. He hydrated 'way more than usual,' draining four or five bottles of water in the morning before flooding his system with sodium tablets and electrolytes at the ballpark. With the temperature hovering in the mid-80s that night, he logged seven scoreless innings. Advertisement 'I was peeing, like, every 30 minutes,' Schwellenbach said. 'It was unbelievable. But during the game I felt good.' The next day, with triple-digit heat before the game and a 97-degree first pitch, Mets outfielder Tyrone Taylor pointed to a Vitamin Water bottle with a pinkish hue sitting in his locker. The drink came courtesy of Jeremy Chiang, the club's performance nutrition coordinator. The coloring came from a hydration packet called Right Stuff. During the game, Chiang packed individual coolers of these drinks for each player. 'We get a lot of reminders just to drink a lot of water and take those,' Taylor said. The state of athletic nutrition has advanced to the point where teams can test players for hydration levels, measure the rates at which they sweat and devise specific plans for each individual. They can replace fluid and electrolytes with specialized drinks designed for each player, and they can bring down elevated body temperatures with ice baths and frozen towels. 'In baseball, it only takes being a little proactive to overcome it because you have opportunities to cool and to drink and to be in shade, especially at the pro level,' said Douglas Casa, CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute and one of the leading experts on heat management for athletes. 'It has to be more than taking a sip of fluid. It has to be meaningful.' In the not-so-distant future, Casa said, teams might have a dugout iPad showing each player's real-time hydration level — eventually, their body temperature, too — but even then, it will be imperative that teams prepare ahead of time. Casa said he worries first about a player's pregame hydration level — it's hard to make up ground, especially in difficult conditions — and he stressed that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for addressing it. Advertisement The Mets provided a series of guidelines for making it through last week's games. Not every suggestion made sense for every player. Mets starter Clay Holmes said he did not require cold towels in between innings. 'I don't really like getting, like, more wet,' Holmes said. 'I try to dry off a little bit.' The training staff advised players to build a base of cool liquids in the morning and consider taking a cold shower in the evening. During the games, the players were told to consume five to eight ounces of liquid every inning, even if they weren't thirsty. Chugging was not recommended. That might have been what went wrong for De La Cruz. After getting thrown out at the plate in the bottom of the third inning on June 21, he 'drank a bunch of water — I mean a bunch,' Reds manager Terry Francona said after the game. 'He went right out and got rid of it.' Mize, who lives in Tampa during the offseason, could not discern a similar cause for his own heat-related issues. 'I feel like we're pretty buttoned up, man,' Mize said. 'I drink half my body weight in ounces of water every day.' He embarked on his usual routine before his outing against the Rays: He ate a banana before the game and three more during it. A plethora of Gatorade, water and cold towels could not prevent his body from locking up with cramps after five innings. 'Get me out of Steinbrenner Field, I guess,' Mize said.'That place is rough.' In deference to the facility's lack of a roof and the instability of south Florida weather, Major League Baseball front-loaded Tampa Bay's schedule with home games this year as Tropicana Field undergoes repairs for damage sustained during Hurricane Milton. The Rays will play at Steinbrenner Field only 16 times in July and August. On Monday, the team welcomed the Athletics, the other club using a minor-league stadium as its home ballpark in 2025. The issues at Sutter Health Ballpark in Sacramento are well-documented, as Athletics pitcher Luis Severino relayed to The Athletic this past weekend: Sparse crowds, a lack of air conditioning, minimal cover from the sun during day games. The Athletics plan to play in Sacramento through at least 2027. By then, the organization hopes, construction will be complete on a new stadium in Las Vegas. The design plans released by the team describe the Vegas ballpark as 'climate-controlled,' with a roof to ward off the hellish desert sun. In the meantime, designated hitter Brent Rooker said, the days in Sacramento may be tough, but at the very least, the temperature at night has been tolerable. Advertisement 'Honestly, it hasn't been too bad at home,' Rooker said. 'What we've found at Sac is no matter how hot it has been during the day, it cools down a ton at night. So the night games have been, generally, fine.' The same cannot be said for the humidity in Tampa. Experts refer to something called the WetBulb Globe Temperature, which the National Weather Service describes as 'a measure of the heat stress in direct sunlight, which takes into account: temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover.' It's basically the WAR of heat — an advanced metric reducing multiple factors into a single number. FIFA has introduced guidelines calling for additional mid-game cooling breaks when the Wetbulb temperature exceeds 32 degrees Celsius (a little over 89 degrees Fahrenheit) — they have been a regular feature at this year's Club World Cup — and American football teams and long-distance runners have also become familiar with the Wetbulb concept while working with experts like Casa to keep athletes from overheating when the measurement gets too high. Baseball isn't as fraught as soccer and football, largely because each half-inning provides an opportunity for players to cool and hydrate. (In fact, Casa said he worries at least as much about the umpires who do not get regular breaks and often — ahem — are not in professional athlete shape.) It's imperative, Casa said, that players begin each game fully hydrated, replace lost fluids in-game, and keep their core temperature well shy of the 104-degree extreme danger zone. Each player handles heat differently, and simply cooling by a degree or two, Casa said, can improve physical, emotional and cognitive function. Or, more to the point: it can keep a player from puking in left field. 'That's why these people are making the effort,' Casa said. 'Like the Tampa Bay Rays, they're making the effort to figure it out because of the individual variability.' The Rays understood the elements would be unkind this season. The training staff recommends players drink tart cherry juice, beet juice and water mixed with a recovery pack called Juven. During spring training, the Rays tested each player's sweat rate — second baseman Brandon Lowe discovered that he was a 'Tier 2 sweater' — and Pepiot tried to acclimate to the heat by taking his dog on longer walks. The players try to spend time outside before games, 'so when it's time to go to work, I'm not getting kicked in the teeth because I've been sitting in the air conditioning all day,' Pepiot said. Advertisement The group has responded to the challenge. The team entered Monday trailing the New York Yankees by only a half game in the American League East. Tampa Bay has a winning record at home. Several Rays suggested those early months at Steinbrenner Field have prepared the club well for future heat waves this summer. 'It kind of seemed like a curse,' Rasmussen said. 'But maybe it was more of a blessing in disguise.' On Saturday afternoon, as the temperature at Baltimore's Camden Yards inched into the 90s, there were Rays swarmed across the infield for optional pregame fielding drills. The team had grown comfortable being uncomfortable. 'We're used to it now,' Pepiot said. 'We're playing outdoors in Tampa, Fla. It is not cool at all.' With reports from The Athletic's Cody Stavenhagen (Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Photo: William Purnell / Getty Images)
USA Today
2 days ago
- Climate
- USA Today
Florida is a 'beast': Rays survive elements in Tampa, but can they be road warriors?
BALTIMORE – They are three months deep living in the upside down, in the thick of attacking the ostensibly most challenging portion of their 2025 season. Yet the Tampa Bay Rays believe the hard part is possibly over – and goodness, did they weather it well. With hurricane damage banishing them from climate-controlled Tropicana Field to an insufferable outdoor waystation for one season, Tampa Bay has learned to endure the elements and relish the road and now, they're getting a big dose of bags and buses, charters and lobby coffee. In hopes of mitigating untenable outdoor summer conditions at George M. Steinbrenner Field – where the magnanimous New York Yankees are allowing them to crash this year as Tropicana Field undergoes repairs – Major League Baseball frontloaded the Rays' schedule with home games, the better to play under April showers than July thunder. RAYS IN TAMPA: Sketchbook tour of Rays' temporary home And as the season careens into the second half, the Rays have a home/road schedule split that many would find untenable: Thirty-one games left at home, 47 on the road. But there's fewer pop-up showers that ruin batting practice on the road, only for stultifying tropical air to linger through gametime. There's no wild gusts of wind that can turn an infield pop-up into a warning-track adventure or cause a slider to break in a manner the pitcher does not expect. And most of all, there's not that humidity, the kind that makes world-class athletes cower indoors for as long as possible, the better to save their electrolytes for game time. 'Now,' Rays right-hander Ryan Pepiot tells USA TODAY Sports, 'whoever spends the least amount of time on the field probably has the best chance of winning. You think about football and teams that have the most time of possession tend to win. We want to have the least amount of time of possession. Spend the least amount of time out there, get our guys out of the heat. 'Get off the field.' And get out of town, typically with a win. The Rays, nondescript at best and bedraggled at worst when the season began, have used this first half both to develop an identity and reestablish themselves as an American League power. At 47-37, they're just 1 ½ games behind the Yankees in the AL East, with a firm clutch on the No. 1 wild card position. A mashup of veterans and youth – a largely similar group produced an 80-82 mark last year – has coalesced behind an unlikely trio of young players, a stout and wildly healthy pitching staff and the vibes that come with making the best of a remarkably suboptimal situation. 'It was completely out of everybody's control. You can't decide if a roof gets torn off the Trop or not,' says second baseman Brandon Lowe, who along with slugger Yandy Diaz and closer Pete Fairbanks are the last remaining players from their 2020 World Series team. 'As soon as it happened I was kind of like, 'OK, whatever happens, we found a place to play. We'll make it our own.' 'The circumstances didn't bring us together. I think how close this group already was and how close we could be helped everybody make the transition and do it easier.' And they're likely ushering in another prosperous era for the Rays – at a very uncertain time. Jonathan Aranda powers up It's not just Tropicana Field, which is being repaired by the city of St. Petersburg under terms of the Rays' lease and should be operational in 2026. The much-maligned but pleasant dome will be the Rays' home through at least 2028. Yet the team backed out of a deal for a massive development and stadium project adjacent to the Trop after Hurricane Milton's devastation delayed full approval of the deal. The franchise is now for sale, with Jacksonville developer Patrick Zalupski submitting a letter of intent to purchase the team, and Memphis hedge fund founder Trip Miller aiming to counteroffer. A new buyer would inherit a team with a gaggle of emerging talent. None are as unlikely as first baseman Jonathan Aranda, who had three shots to stick with the Rays from 2022-24 – and could not do it. Aranda found more runway this spring, with a full winter to take advantage of last summer's trade of infielder Isaac Paredes. And Aranda has made himself indispensable. He leads the team with 3.1 WAR and ranks third in the AL in batting (.325) and OPS (.902), his name literally encroaching upon Aaron Judge in both categories. Saturday, he crushed a 467-foot home run, third-longest in the club's Statcast era, a clout that had his teammates clamoring for his addition to the AL's All-Star squad next month in Atlanta. ARANDA 💥 Aranda? He's still grateful for the opportunity to stay on the field, to see his name in Kevin Cash's lineup every day. 'I feel very happy with the confidence the manager and other guys have given me,' Aranda tells USA TODAY Sports via club translator Eddie Rodriguez. 'I'm a confident player and I'm a player that's been waiting for my opportunity. 'Thank God this year, I was able to get this opportunity. I feel very strong and very confident about being here.' It's been a 10-year battle to stick, since the Rays signed him out of Tijuana in 2015. As Aranda methodically climbed the organizational ladder, finally reaching full-season Class A ball in 2019, his best friend from Tijuana, Alejandro Kirk, was zipping through the Toronto Blue Jays system, making his big league debut in 2020. Aranda, 27, is six months older than Kirk and has known the burly catcher 'since I've had a memory.' Now, he may join him in notching an All-Star appearance. His skill set fits snugly into the Rays' puzzle. 'It's a unique situation,' says Aranda. 'We have a little bit of everything: We have power hitters, we have contact hitters, basestealers. It marks the difference between us and 29 other teams.' He's not wrong. The Rays reached the season's halfway mark as just the fourth team to hit at least 85 homers and steal at least 100 bases; one of the three clubs to precede them was Cincinnati's 1977 Big Red Machine. Junior Caminero breaks out If there is a bona fide star in the Rays' midst, it is Junior Caminero, whose widely expected breakout took a minute to get going this season. Caminero, 21, was slashing .240/.273/.432 through his first 32 games. In the 28 games since? He's produced 14 homers and an .892 OPS and had 20 homers by the halfway point, joining Eddie Mathews, Albert Pujols and Cody Bellinger as the lone 21-year-olds to pull that off. The breakout is unfolding. 'I recognize that I have the talent to be here,' Caminero, a Dominican Republic native, says via Rodriguez. 'I don't put pressure on myself. I thank God and I thank Cashy for the opportunity. I'm not paying attention to anything else outside, if they're going to send me down or anything like that. 'I know that I belong here.' As he speaks, veteran outfielder Christopher Morel aims to rattle the young slugger, and Caminero turns and playfully smacks him in the chest. More often, Caminero is playing follow the leader with the Rays' veteran core. 'The team is really united, regardless if you're a veteran or not,' he says. 'I can go to Yandy or B-Lowe or they can come to me and say something. I think that's what's carried us to this point we are now – that camaraderie, that unity we have. 'We go out there to perform and thank God we're where we are right now.' Says outfielder Josh Lowe: 'Whether it's Junior or Aranda, both of them getting their first full chance at the big leagues, it's impressive. Junior got his teeth kicked in a little bit at the beginning of the season. It didn't go as smoothly as he'd thought. And he turned it around. 'Man, he's been incredible. He's a treat when he's in the box, a treat on the field. He's a good person, a good player and man, he puts the work in behind the scenes. He's an awesome kid and I'm happy to see all the success he's had so far.' Jake Mangum becomes indespensible Diaz, Caminero, Aranda and Brandon Lowe have combined for 61 of the Rays' 92 home runs. Yet it is the diversity of the Rays' portfolio that would make them a particularly daunting playoff team. They lead the major leagues in stolen bases with 108, and Chandler Simpson, perhaps the fastest man in the majors, is back in center field after a trip to the minors to work on his defense. Yet it is left fielder Jake Mangum who has seized opportunity and not looked back. Mangum has been slept on since he was patrolling the outfield at Mississippi State in the late 2010s. He was picked in the 30th and 32nd rounds by the Yankees and Mets in consecutive years, swallowed his pride and returned for a senior season in Starkville. By 2019, the Mets saw fit to burn a fourth-round pick on Mangum but dealt him to Miami in December 2022; a year later, he was a player to be named in a five-team deal with the Rays. This March, fate finally intervened: Josh Lowe strained an oblique during the opening week and Mangum, at 29 years old, made his major league debut. He was easy to overlook; Mangum hit just 24 home runs in six minor league seasons. Yet he's a contact machine, striking out just 9% of the time in college and 13% in his first 178 major league plate appearances. Now, he's slashing .316/.354/.392, playing elite defense in left field and is 10 for 11 in stolen-base attempts. They are skills that took a while to be appreciated, especially when 'senior sign' and 'longtime minor leaguer' are difficult tags to shake. 'Sure, did I want to leave college earlier? Yeah, absolutely,' says Mangum, son of former Chicago Bears defensive back John Mangum. 'But there's nothing about my game that jumps off the charts. I'm not like an elite speed guy. I'm a good runner, but I'm not some 80-grade runner. 'I just try to help any way I can, man.' A trade to the Rays, and their come-as-you-are ethos, certainly helped. 'If I tailored my game to pro baseball and wouldn't have made it, I would have lived with a lot of regret,' he says. 'So, I just said, let's play my game and if I don't make it, I'll be able to sleep at night.' Says Cash: 'He has really added a dynamic to our lineup that's been pretty spectacular, special. It's not Chandler speed, but you see the urgency, what middle infielders have to do to get rid of the ball. His ability to put the bat on everything gets taxing for a pitching staff.' 'We want to be here' Now, the Rays attack the back nine of a season that, despite literal storm clouds, has been charmed in many ways. Their phenomenal 27-6 start to the 2023 season was waylaid by a torrent of devastating arm injuries to the pitching staff; this year, they've used just six starting pitchers and their rotation ranks second in the majors in innings pitched and third in WHIP. As for the conditions at home? Well, they made good use of offseason urges to hydrate, recover, and stay out of the heat. 'Well, it's been hot,' says Josh Lowe, dryly. 'It's no secret: Florida in the summertime is a beast. But if you look at our schedule, we're at the halfway point and so 50-plus of those (second half) games are on the road. Not to say we're not going to play games at home, but at least we know that most of our schedule hopefully comes in better weather than playing in Florida.' Indeed, the Rays are six games into a stretch of 16 road dates in 19 games. From July 25 through Aug. 31, they'll play 25 of 33 games on the road, including a 12-game trip to Anaheim, Seattle, Sacramento and San Francisco. Those bay breezes should only accentuate the quality hang time the lads are anticipating. 'We had a goal this year to be a cohesive unit. Not just the pitchers hanging out, not just the hitters hanging out, but just everybody being inclusive,' says Pepiot. 'I think that's shown throughout the season. 'It's felt like a very close clubhouse. We want to be here.' Wherever 'here' may be.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Rays at Orioles Prediction: Odds, expert picks, starting pitchers, betting trends and stats for June 27
Its Friday, June 27 and the Rays (46-35) are in Baltimore to take on the Orioles (34-46). Ryan Pepiot is slated to take the mound for Tampa Bay against Tomoyuki Sugano for Baltimore. Don't look now but Tampa is nipping at the Yankees' heels sitting just 1/2 game behind the leaders in the American League East after sweeping the Royals earlier this week. Tampa pitching was elite in the series allowing just one run over the three games. Yesterday, Shane Baz threw eight scoreless innings in a 4-0 win for the Rays. Advertisement The Orioles were off Thursday after losing two of three in a series against the Rangers. Jacob deGrom was vintage deGrom for Texas on Wednesday allowing one hit over seven innings. Baltimore is now 12 games under .500 and 12 games back in the American League East. Lets dive into the matchup and find a sweat or two. We've got all the info and analysis you need to know ahead of the game, including the latest info on the how to catch tipoff, odds, recent team performance, player stats, and of course, our predictions, picks & best bets for the game from our modeling tools and staff of experts. Follow Rotoworld Player News for the latest fantasy and betting player news and analysis all season long. Game details & how to watch Rays at Orioles Date: Friday, June 27, 2025 Time: 7:05PM EST Site: Oriole Park at Camden Yards City: Baltimore, MD Network/Streaming: Apple TV+ Advertisement Never miss a second of the action and stay up-to-date with all the latest team stats and player news. Check out our day-by-day MLB schedule page, along with detailed matchup pages that update live in-game with every out. Odds for the Rays at the Orioles The latest odds as of Friday: Moneyline: Rays (-123), Orioles (+103) Spread: Rays -1.5 Total: 9.0 runs Probable starting pitchers for Rays at Orioles Pitching matchup for June 27, 2025: Ryan Pepiot vs. Tomoyuki Sugano Rays: Ryan Pepiot (5-6, 3.04 ERA) Last outing: 6/21 vs. Detroit - 5IP, 1ER, 3H, 2BB, 7Ks Orioles: Tomoyuki Sugano (5-4, 3.55 ERA) Last outing: 6/20 at Yankees - 3.2IP, 3ER, 7H, 3BB, 4Ks Rotoworld still has you covered with all the latest MLB player news for all 30 teams. Check out the feed page right here on NBC Sports for headlines, injuries and transactions where you can filter by league, team, positions and news type! Top betting trends & insights to know ahead of Rays at Orioles The Rays have won 7 of their last 9 games on the road The Under is 4-1 in the Orioles' last 5 games against AL East teams The Rays have covered in 4 of their last 5 games showing a profit of 3.69 units Ryan Pepiot has struck out at least 7 opposing hitters in each of his 4 starts in June Junior Caminero is 5-21 over his last 5 games Gunnar Henderson is without a hit over his last 5 games (0-14) Jackson Holliday is 5-17 over his last 4 games Advertisement If you're looking for more key trends and stats around the spread, moneyline and total for every single game on the schedule today, check out our MLB Top Trends tool on NBC Sports! Expert picks & predictions for tonight's game between the Rays and the Orioles Rotoworld Best Bet Please bet responsibly. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call the National Gambling Helpline at 1-800-522-4700. Our model calculates projections around each moneyline, spread and over/under bet for every game on the MLB calendar based on data points like past performance, player matchups, ballpark information and weather forecasts. Advertisement Once the model is finished running, we put its projection next to the latest betting lines for the game to arrive at a relative confidence level for each wager. Here are the best bets our model is projecting for Friday's game between the Rays and the Orioles: Moneyline: NBC Sports Bet is recommending a play on the Tampa Bay Rays on the Moneyline. Spread: NBC Sports Bet is leaning towards a play ATS on the Baltimore Orioles at +1.5. Total: NBC Sports Bet is recommending a play on the over on the Game Total of 9.0. Want even more MLB best bets and predictions from our expert staff & tools? Check out the Expert MLB Predictions page from NBC Follow our experts on socials to keep up with all the latest content from the staff:
