Sunday will be a special day for Tampa Bay Rays starting pitcher Drew Rasmussen.
The right-hander looking forward to taking to the mound on Mother’s Day in tribute to his mother, mother-in-law and wife.
“It’s just really cool to get to pitch on a day to celebrate them,” he said.
He also will get to face the visiting Milwaukee Brewers, his former team, for the first time as the Rays look to sweep the three-game series.
Rasmussen (1-3, 3.09 ERA) got his start in professional baseball with the Brewers. He made his major league debut with the team on Aug. 19, 2020, and appeared in 27 games with them before he was traded to Tampa Bay in May 2021.
“I’m very grateful for the Milwaukee Brewers franchise,” he said. “It’s exciting to get to pitch against them. I’ve got nothing but great memories. I love the city. The organization was great to me. It’s where I got to debut, and it’ll be fun to compete against them.”
Rasmussen is 0-2 with a 6.28 ERA in his past three starts, allowing 10 runs and 16 hits in 14 1/3 innings. It’s a notable swing from his first four starts of the season, when he went 1-1 with a 0.87 ERA while giving up just two runs on 12 hits in 20 2/3 innings.
“It all just comes down to execution. It always will, it always has,” Rasmussen said. “If you execute average to above average, the correct pitch to the correct location, you’re going to have a lot of success.”
The Rays are coming off a 3-2 walk-off win against the Brewers on Saturday, with Travis Jankowski delivering a victory-clinching RBI single. They pulled it out after rain delayed the start by 30 minutes and halted the game for nearly 40 minutes in the fifth inning.
“To be able to stay locked in through that entire process and then having some rain on and off as we came back on the field, it’s not easy to do,” Jankowski said. “It says a lot about the character of the guys in this clubhouse and how much winning every game means to them.”
The Brewers, meanwhile, are looking to snap a three-game losing streak.
Streaks have been the story of the past two and a half weeks for Milwaukee, alternating winning and losing runs since April 23. A four-game slide from April 23-26 was followed by three straight victories before another three-game skid. They had won three in a row before their current stretch.
“We’ve got to go through this, and we’ve got to deal with it in the right way,” manager Pat Murphy said. “We’ve got to deal with it, try to come out of it.”
The Brewers had a prime opportunity to take the lead in the top of the ninth on Saturday when they had the bases loaded with one out, but a popout and flyout stranded the runners.
“We’re not a very good offense right now,” Murphy said. “We’ve got a lot of guys that we need to be ‘on it’ who aren’t. … I’ll take them guys nine out of 10 times in clutch situations.”
Right-hander Chad Patrick (2-3, 3.08) will get the nod for Milwaukee to face Tampa Bay for the first time in his career.
–Field Level Media
