Florida @ Tampa Bay preview
Tropicana Field
Last Meeting ( Jun 11, 2010 ) Florida 14, Tampa Bay 9
While the Tampa Bay Rays have the game's best record, their Sunshine State rivals have been the better team in interleague play. That trend continued Friday.
The Marlins, who have the best all-time record amongst National League teams in interleague play, meet the Rays in the second of a three-game series at St. Petersburg on Saturday night.
Florida walloped Tampa Bay in Friday night;s opener. The Marlins jumped on starter James Shields for 10 runs in 3 1/3 innings on the way to a 14-9 victory.
Gaby Sanchez hit a pair of home runs in the game and drove in six runs for Florida, which scored five runs in the third inning and four more in the fourth to put the game out of reach.
Rookie Mike Stanton, playing in his third major league game, went 2-for-5 with two RBIs.
Matt Garza starts on Saturday for the Rays. Garza is 2-0 lifetime against the Marlins, allowing just four hits and two runs in 16 innings against Florida.
Garza snapped a personal string of three straight losses in his last outing with a 9-5 win against the Texas Rangers. He had gone over a month without recording a victory prior to the start.
Carlos Pena continued his power surge in Friday's loss. Pena smacked his 14th home run of the season - and fifth in five games - in the sixth inning.
He finished with three hits in the contest and raised his average to .196 on the season. Pena has not been over the .200 mark since May 6.
Ricky Nolasco (5-4) will start for the Marlins. Among the NL leaders in strikeouts the past two years, Nolasco has seen his numbers in that department slip a bit this season - which some say is due to a splitter that hasn't been moving.
Before Friday's game, the Marlins called up Rick VanderHurk in an effort to bolster their struggling bullpen. VanderHurk had been lighting it up in Triple-A New Orleans where he was 3-0 with a 1.53 ERA in five starts last month. But he struggled in Friday's game, allowing three hits while retiring just one batter.
The Marlins also unveiled some of their extravagant plans for their new ballpark on Friday.
The park is set to open in 2012 and will feature two aquariums located in the stands on each side of home plate. The aquariums will be three-feet high and 34-feet long and stocked with tropical fish. They will be built of bulletproof glass to prevent them from being cracked by foul balls.