Rays waste a lead and a performance in loss

by Gary Shelton on July 27, 2022

in general

Wednesday, 4 a.m.

This is what they mean by letting a lead go to waste.

All around the Tampa Bay Rays, there was waste after a 5-3 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. It was yet another disappointment against a last-place team; the Rays are now 12-15 against last-place teams this year and have lost eight of their last nine games against them. They are 7-7 against Baltimore after going 18-1 against them a year ago.

Talk about squandering things. Such as:


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-- A dominant pitching performance by Shane McClanahan, who gave up only three hits over seven innings. Two of the hits were home runs, but he retired the last 10 batters in a row and left with a lead.

-- The rebirth of Isaac Paredes. Paredes, a hot hitter in June, had a home run and a single. He had been one for his last 23 before the game.

-- The awakening of the bats. The Rays had 12 hits, including a hit by Luke Raley (hitting .166), one by Roman Quinn (.217), one by Yu Chang (.179) and one by Josh Lowe (.202). Still, the Rays scored just three runs. They were two for eight with runners in scoring position and left nine men on base.

"I was encouraged that we swung the bats well," Rays' manager Kevin Cash said. "We hit a lot of balls hard. We’d like to think we could get some more runs with 13 hits (actually, 12) or whatever it was ."

Cash said he never thought about keeping McClanahan in the game even though he had just 81 pitches after seven innings.

"To be honest, if his pitch count wasn't so low, he would have been done after six," Cash said.

The Rays' undoing came at the hands of reliever Colin Poche, who got only one man out. He threw 17 piitches and gave up a single, double, a home run and a walk.

Poche went 3-0 to Adley Rutschman and gave up a single. Ramon Urias then hit a two run homer. Trey Mancini closed out the scoring with a sacrifice fly.

“Colin’s been outstanding for us this year," Cash said.

The Rays, who are 2-6 in Camden Yards this year, have another chance tonight at 7:05 p.m. Drew Rasmussen will start for the Rays against Tyler Wells.



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