Rays move to 9-0, match best MLB start in 20 years

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — —

The Tampa Bay Rays are putting together one of the best starts ever.

The Rays routed the Oakland Athletics 11-0 Sunday to improve to 9-0 as Drew Rasmussen combined on a one-hitter and Brandon Lowe hit a grand slam. Tampa Bay is the first team to win its first nine games since the 2003 Kansas City Royals.

“Essentially, everything is going exactly the way that we want to,” Lowe said. “This is incredible baseball that we're playing."

Tampa Bay has outscored opponents 75-18, scoring the most runs in the big leagues and allowing the fewest.

“It just opens things up,” Rasmussen said of the Rays' offense. “The way they're going right now, it's unbelievable.”

The Rays have won every game by four or more runs, trailing only a 13-game run by the 1884 St. Louis Maroons of the Union Association as the longest at a season's start. The streak is the longest at any point of a season since 10 by the 1939 New York Yankees.

The longest winning streak at a season's start is 13 by the 1982 Atlanta Braves and 1987 Milwaukee Brewers.

Oakland has lost seven of nine. The Athletics were outscored 22-0 in the final two games of the series and limited to four hits, dropping their batting average to .192. The team ERA jumped from 7.00 to 7.54.

The Athletics run differential of minus-45 through nine games is the third worse since 1900, only behind the 1955 Kansas City Athletics (minus-55) and the 1988 Baltimore Orioles (minus-48).

“I think we've got to put this series behind us,” Oakland manager Mark Kotsay said. “We'll talk about it, how we get better going forward.”

Wander Franco and Harold Ramírez also homered for the Rays, who have hit a big league-leading 24 long balls.

Rasmussen (2-0) allowed his only runner on Ramon