Evan Longoria struggled on defense against Astros./STEVEN MUNCIE
Saturday, 3 a.m.
Usually, Evan Longoria is cool enough to tame the hot corner.
Not Friday night, however.
Longoria's failure to make a play in the seventh inning led to the go-ahead run by the Houston Astros in a 6-3 loss. Alex Cobb surrendered a single, a double and a walk to load the bases, and reliever Jumbo Diaz came on. Diaz coaxed a ground ball to third, but Longoria – setting up to throw home — bobbled the ball and was forced to take a single out at third.
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Alex Cobb ran into trouble in the seventh./STEVEN MUNCIE
The Astros added two runs on a sacrifice fly and a wild pitch.
The Rays took a 3-1 lead on solo home runs by Corey Dickerson, Logan Morrison and Longoria.
“It’s a play I’ve made a hundred times,” Longoria said. “Just didn’t make the play. It’s probably one of my worst days defensively in a while and it ended up being the difference in the game. Jumbo came in and made the pitch he needed to make and I just didn’t make the play and it ended up costing us the
Derek Norris unsuccessfully tries to catch a foul ball./STEVEN MUNCIE
game, it’s as simple as that. It’s a play that needs to be made and I take responsibility for it. It is what it is. It sucks.
“As a whole, we didn’t play great defense. We gave them too many outs and that one ended up being the biggest one. They are a good team and when you give a good team extra outs, they make you pay.”
Said manager Kevin Cash: “We just came off a series where a lot of things went our way and we capitalized on it, maybe the opposite today. We got out to swing the bat well the first couple of innings, but just weren’t able to continue to add on and we let them creep back in. Good team obviously over there that took advantage of some opportunities.”
Pitcher Alex Cobb threw six innings (and three batters) and gave up four earned runs and nine hits.
“From a personal standpoint there were some moments in the game where I felt in-sync. Mechanics were coming together. I wasn’t really thinking, I was just being a pitcher out there. Changeup had some good movement at certain times throughout the game. Unfortunately, part of trying to find your
Beckham throws the ball towards first./STEVEN MUNCIE
changeup or finding a certain pitch, you have to kind of learn by failure and there were some pitches there when I was throwing the changeup, it wasn’t doing what I wanted and it was getting hit pretty hard. Certain moments, there was a 3-2 to Springer, I had to zero in and throw it and it worked to my favor, but these are the difficulties that I am going to go through until I’m a 100 percent mechanics and I stop thinking out there.
“There were certain moments where it (his change-up) was back. Moments where I felt like ‘OK, this is that pitch that I can go to at any time and not have damage.’ Worst case scenario probably get a ball hit on the ground and then there were also times with the home run and the double in the 1st where it was not there and those are the things that are going to happen when I’m struggling with it.”
The Rays play the Astros at the Trop tonight at 6:10 p.m. Blake Snell (0-2) will pitch against Charlie Morton (1-1).
Miller tosses the bat on his way to first../STEVEN MUNCIE
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