Rays sloppy again in loss to Baltimore

by Gary Shelton on May 23, 2022

in general

Monday, 3 a.m.

It's bad enough to lose to the Baltimore Orioles.

It's worse when your team becomes the Baltimore Orioles.

For a day, it was hard to tell the Tampa Bay Rays from the cellar-dwelling Orioles, who came back to beat the Rays 7-6 in 11 innings Sunday.






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The Rays dropped fly balls (although only one was scored an error). They booted ground balls. They blew leads. They had a manager ejected. They blew a four-run lead. They also blew a two-run lead. They had wild pitches, passed balls and balks. They stranded runners.

And they lost one of those embarrassing giveaway games that happens from time to time.

Consider. Randy Arozarena dropped his second fly ball in three games. Vidal Brujan misplayed two grounders. Kevin Kiermaier didn't make a catch he normally does. And the game ended when a dribbler scooted past first baseball Ji-Man Choi.

 “Uncharacteristic," said Rays' manager Kevin Cash. "All we can do is get back to work to clean that up. We pride ourselves on securing the ball and getting as many outs as we can for our pitchers. I don't feel like we did that today."

The Rays built a 4-0 lead in the first on a three-run homer by Isaac Paredes, but the team struggled to keep the lead despite using nine relief pitchers. In the ninth, Ryan Thompson gave up a two-out, two strike single to Austin Hays to tie the game.

The Rays had runners on first and third with no one out in the 10th but didn't score.

"I have full confidence in Ryan," Cash said. "Walks came back to bite us a little bit. We had  multiple opportunities to win that game. We just didn’t get it done. The Orioles did.

“We did some really good things offensively early in the game. Their pitching stepped up and kept us quiet and allowed them to get back in the game. That generally doesn’t happen, but it’s happened now twice. We’ve just got to play better."

The Rays are off today, then host Miami on Tuesday night at 7:10 p.m. at Tropicana Field. Shane McClanahan will start for the Rays against Pablo Lopez.

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