CINCINNATI — With Saturday’s 6-2 loss dropping the Rays to a majors worst 7-17 over the last month, their ongoing struggles have reached a point of relativity.
Or punchlines.
How bad has it been going?
So bad … that in one key moment their most sure-handed defender, Taylor Walls, couldn’t make the play on a sixth-inning grounder that gave the Reds a 2-1 lead.
So bad … that in another they were one strike from escaping a jam but had two relievers unable to do so. Bryan Baker had to leave the game with a calf issue. Garrett Cleavinger came in, threw three straight balls to load the bases, then gave up a bloop single that scored the decisive runs.
“Yeah, it’s a little bit where you feel like the ball is not really bouncing our way and (we’re) kind of not catching some breaks right now,” Cleavinger said. “But I know this group will fight through it, and we’ll come back (Sunday) ready to go.”
They better hurry, before their bosses decide they may as well deal away key pieces by Thursday’s trade deadline.
The loss was the Rays’ fifth in eight games since resuming play after the All-Star break, dropping them to 53-52, 10 games behind the American League East-leading Blue Jays and 2 ½ out of the third AL wild-card spot.
The circumstances Saturday did seem to conspire against the Rays.
Indiana boy Ryan Pepiot, pitching as a big-leaguer for the first time in the park he went to as a kid, and with 50-plus relatives and friends on hand, gave them a strong six-inning start in a duel with Reds All-Star Andrew Abbott.
Pepiot allowed only two hits and the two unearned runs, though he was properly frustrated by a season-high four walks.
“That just can’t happen,” Pepiot said.
One of those walks, to TJ Friedl with one out in the sixth, set up the Walls play — and the team-wide shock that he didn’t make it. Friedl went to second on a Matt McLain single, and a groundout moved the runners to second and third.
Austin Hays’ grounder to short came off the bat at 104.2 mph. Walls went for it aggressively, as he usually does, and was stunned by what happened.
“The ball is hit hard, but you can’t play shortstop trying to be patient, waiting on the ball. You have to come get the ball. You have to be ready to attack it. You have to attack hops,” he said.
“I’ve attacked that same exact hop 1,000 times. I’m lucky to have my teeth, to be honest, because that hop shouldn’t happen.”
How?
“I don’t know what it hit, but it hit something, kicked way higher than it should have (about 7 ½ inches, he guessed), and I couldn’t get any glove on it,” Walls said. “I don’t think that ball takes that hop in a cow pasture, to be honest.”
Why?
“It just kind of feels like how it’s been going lately,” Walls said.
The two runs erased the lead the Rays had grabbed on Yandy Diaz’s homer to open the sixth. But they came right back to get even in the seventh. Jose Caballero walked, went to third on a hit by just-activated Jonny DeLuca and scored on a pinch-hit single by Josh Lowe.
But more trouble was brewing.
Baker, acquired earlier this month from Baltimore, allowed a leadoff walk in the seventh, then another with two outs. He was ahead of McLain 1-2, with a chance to end the inning without dangerous Elly De La Cruz getting to the plate.
But Baker felt something in his right calf (a cramp or a strain, with further evaluation Sunday) and it showed. Though he initially wanted to keep pitching, he was taken out.
“Just one of those weird baseball games,” Baker said. “It does feel like we could use a few breaks to go our way.”
Cleavinger had been warming up and said entering the game in that situation wasn’t an issue.
“It’s different, but that’s no excuse,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “(A) 1-2 count, every pitcher in baseball would rather walk onto the mound with a 1-2 count.”
But Cleavinger threw three straight balls to walk McLain and load the bases. “Wasn’t as sharp as we’d like,” he said.
He again was one strike from ending the inning when he got ahead of De La Cruz 0-2, then again threw three straight balls — “some borderline,” he said — and gave up a 72 mph blooper to shallow center that scored two.
“Just dunks it in,” Cleavinger said. “So it’s kind of tough.”
Pepiot summed it all up.
“It’s just one of those games — it just snowballs,” he said. “Free passes leads to longer time out on the field leads to a weird hop to Taylor, because he makes that play 100 out of 100 (times). Baker has a cramp, or whatever it was, has to come out. ‘Cleav’ comes in the game. ‘Cleav’s’ been in the zone all year. And he just walks a couple guys, Then Kevin (Kelly) comes in, and they just squeeze a couple balls through the infield (for two more runs).
“It just seemed like after the sixth inning, nothing went our way. It’s just frustrating.”
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