Tampa Bay looks to avoid being swept by the NL West-leading San Diego Padres.<\/p>\n
San Diego Padres at Tampa Bay Rays \u2013 Day<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n San Diego hammered out three home runs in picking up a 5-4 road victory over the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night.\u00a0 The victory moved the team\u2019s record to 19-13 on the road (+1,060), giving them the top record in the National League away from home.\u00a0 First baseman Adrian Gonzalez continued his red-hot month of June, as he ranks first in the National League in batting average in June (.428).\u00a0 The rest of the league is starting to realize that the Padres are not a fluke this season, with the team recording a 75-54 record since August 1, 2009.\u00a0 This series is the first for San Diego on artificial turf and it doesn\u2019t seem to be bothering them with victories in the opening two games<\/p>\n Padres SP Wade LeBlanc is an even 4-4 with a 2.88 ERA in 12 starts this season (+500).\u00a0 San Diego has won his last three outings, outscoring the opposition by a 13-4 margin.\u00a0 The left-hander is 2-1 with a 4.35 ERA in four road starts (+310), issuing nine walks and striking out 10 in 20.2 innings of work.\u00a0 Since August 29, 2009, the Padres have won seven of his nine road starts, with him tallying a 4-1 record and 3.81 ERA over that span.\u00a0 LeBlanc has made four daytime starts, posting a 1-2 record and 2.28 ERA, as he\u2019s made just seven daytime appearances in his career (2-4, 3.63 ERA).<\/p>\n Tampa Bay\u2019s players only meeting didn\u2019t produce a victory last night, as the team is 10-17 over its past 27 games, after jumping out to a 32-12 record.\u00a0 \u201cI just wanted to let the guys know or remind the guys that we\u2019re an awesome team, a very good team, and that whoever said it was going to be smooth all the time…there\u2019s going to be some rocky parts of the road,\u201d first baseman Carlos Pena said.\u00a0 Rays third baseman Evan Longoria must get things going to get the team back on track, as he\u2019s collected four hits in his last 30 at-bats.\u00a0 The current homestand begins a stretch for the Rays of playing 13 of 19 games at home leading up to the All-Star break.\u00a0 Currently the team is 18-17 at Tropicana Field this season (-1,120).<\/p>\n Rays SP Matt Garza is 7-5 with a 4.16 ERA in 14 starts this season (-180), but has allowed 12 home runs in only 88.2 innings of work.\u00a0 The right-hander is carrying a 2-1 record in June despite having an inflated 10.66 ERA over three starts.\u00a0 He has allowed 15 runs and 22 hits over just 12.2 innings of work this month.\u00a0 Garza brings a perfect 2-0 record and 2.29 ERA in three daytime starts, as he\u2019s managed to allow just one of his 12 home runs in 19.2 frames under the sun.<\/p>\n Bettors may decided to drop the hammer on the home team in this contest, after finding the Padres 3-4 as a road underdog of +150 to +175 (+60) this season and 12-23 in this spot the past three years (-340).\u00a0 The Rays are sitting in a money spot, bringing a 18-8 mark to the table against left-handed starters in 2010 (+700).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tampa Bay looks to avoid being swept by the NL West-leading San Diego Padres. San Diego Padres at Tampa Bay Rays \u2013 Day San Diego hammered out three home runs in picking up a 5-4 road victory over the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night.\u00a0 The victory moved the team\u2019s record to 19-13 on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[998,999,1981,1534,339,1522,891,150,1759],"class_list":["post-4915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-adrian-gonzalez","tag-carlos-pena","tag-evan-longoria","tag-interleague","tag-matt-garza","tag-nl-west","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-wade-leblanc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4916,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions\/4916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}