Longoria hit his fifth home run in the loss to Toronto./TRAVIS PENDERGRASS
Sunday 8:15 p.m.
The wrong pitchers were backed by the wrong defense. That led to the wrong result for the Tampa Bay Rays Sunday.
A game got away, sudden and completely, from the Rays in the ninth inning. The Rays and Toronto Blue Jays were tied 1-1 in the bottom of the ninth ining.
But Xavier Cedeno and Alex Colome, who have been superb for most of
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Logan Morrison catches a pop-up off the bat of Kevin Pillar./TRAVIS PENDERGRASS
the year, gave up four earned runs while recording only two outs. The tie-breaking run came on a groundout off the bat of Edwin Encarnacion. The shift was on, keeping the Rays from turning the double play. Later, coach Kevin Cash said he wished he had played the infield.
“It was unbelievable, and looking back on it that is what I’m probably most frustrated with, myself,” Cash said. “It was a decision, you’re playing for two and in a perfect world if we had to do it over again, we’d bring the infield in, bring Logan right in the same spot and we have an out at home. But (Alex) Colome made some big pitches to (Jose) Bautista. We got the ground ball, and (Encarnacion) hit it in one spot where we couldn’t turn it.”
Third baseman Evan Longoria said that he thought the ball would have gone through the middle without the shift.
“We wouldn’t have fielded the ball,” Longoria said. “It would have been a base hit up the middle. We were in correct position. He just hit it in the perfect spot.”
The Rays managed only four hits against the Blue Jays. Longoria,with a homer and a single, had two of them.
On Tuesday, Tampa Bay's Matt Moore pitches against Los Angeles' Scott Kazmir, a former Ray.
Opposing running Ezequiel Carrera is tagged out by Logan Forsythe./TRAVIS PENDERGRASS
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