Drew Rasmussen put in one of his worst performances of the year, getting through just four innings while giving up five runs.
Four of those runs came in the first, an uncharacteristically poor inning from the Rays righty. He gave up a single and then two walks — this is a guy who had, before today, given up eight walks all season. And then, probably eager to avoid a bases loaded walk, he threw a mediocre cutter to Wade Meckler, a mediocre hitter (with two career home runs), and Meckler hit it out for a grand slam.
In hindsight, the game ended there. But it’s not like the Rays had no chances.
They came up in the bottom of the first inning down 4-0, and Yandy Diaz led off with a home run. Aha, we all thought, the Rays are down but they are going to chip away at this lead!
That optimism seemed to be warranted. Jonathan Aranda singled and Junior Caminero walked. One out later, Chandler Simpson walked to load the bases.
But Ben Williamson struck out. Yeah, that happens. But he struck out looking…on a ball.
OK, Yandy had earlier had an unsuccessful challenge, maybe Williamson thought he’d get grief for wasting the second challenge in just the first inning? But all the strategic thinking around challenges is that you want to use them in a high leverage situation? Like….having bases loaded where a walk drives in a run and a strikeout greatly diminishes your chances of scoring that inning? And in fact, after this strikeout, Nick Fortes lined out and the inning ended.
When the Rays didn’t have bad judgement they had bad luck. They did score twice in the fifth inning, making the score 6-3 — not a blowout! So that optimism returned when they loaded the bases in the sixth. Jonathan Aranda did hit a nice liner into the outfield that could have brought home a few runs, but Joe Adell made a terrific catch for the final out of the inning.
After that, from the Rays perspective, it was garbage time. They went with a recent callup from Durham, Andrew Wantz, a 30 year old reliever, who played the role of putting the game completely out of reach. He gave up 5 earned runs, and he did all that with just two walks and two hits! Impressive! (he also hit two batters, and some of the runs scored when Cole Sulser, replacing him, gave up a home run).
Just hard to find any bright spots today, although the Yandy-Aranda—Junior part of the lineup contributed. Here’s what the rest of the lineup looked like:
It’s one thing when your 7-9 hitters don’t contribute, but when it’s your 4-9 hitters doing so little, well, you aren’t generating much offense.
I know this is a baseball cliche but I think it rings true here. The Rays winning nearly every day was not sustainable, but I don’t think this string of blow-out losses is the way they will be playing for the rest of the year either. Shane McClanahan will try to turn this ship around tomorrow, but he can’t do it alone.
