Rays starter Nick Martinez cruised through the first seven innings of Tuesday night’s game against the Red Sox at Tropicana Field, breezing into the eighth inning with a complete game very much within his reach. But six pitches, three hits and two runs into the eighth inning, he was suddenly a spectator, resigned to watching from the dugout as Kevin Kelly scaled the mound with the game on the line. So naturally, there was nobody more thrilled than Martinez when Kelly quickly quelled Boston’s rally with three straight groundouts. “I was jacked up,” Martinez said, smiling. “A lot of F-bombs and high fives.” It was that kind of night for Martinez and the Rays, who secured a series victory over the Red Sox with a 4-3 win on Tuesday. The Rays snapped a two-series losing streak and improved their record at Tropicana Field to 23-9 by winning back-to-back games for the first time since a five-game streak from May 17-22. “The way he pitched, he deserved to get the win,” manager Kevin Cash said. “KK picked us up.” The veteran Martinez set the tone, bouncing back from his first rough outing of the season last time out against the Tigers. After allowing two runs or fewer in each of his first 11 starts to begin the season, the right-hander gave up six runs on nine hits over four innings against Detroit. This time, Martinez allowed three runs on six hits and didn’t walk a batter while working into the eighth on 73 pitches. He had everything in his arsenal working, and he consistently threw enough strikes to force the Red Sox to swing early and often. Martinez’s eighth quality start actually raised his ERA to 2.43, the third-lowest mark in the American League behind the Yankees’ Cam Schlittler and Cleveland’s Parker Messick. More importantly, the Rays improved to 10-3 with the 35-year-old on the mound. The way Martinez saw it, he and the rest of the Rays staff simply ran into a “buzzsaw” in the form of the Tigers lineup last week. That kept him from thinking too deeply or worrying too much about his first and only poor start of the season, and it allowed him to return to form against an aggressive Red Sox lineup. “You want to limit the bad ones, right?” Martinez said. “Nothing we had to dissect too heavily. Just going back to, or continue to do, what we do best and attack in the zone and forcing some contact.”
