The Tampa Bay Rays came in on the heels of a sweep of the Cleveland Guardians, but the bats never carried that momentum into the opener against the Texas Rangers. Tampa Bay managed just one run and fell 4-1.
Griffin Jax gave the Rays a workable start, but it wasn’t enough to change the outcome. He worked 5.2 innings, allowed five hits and two runs, and only one of those runs was earned. Jax struck out 10 and walked three, but the Rays couldn’t turn that into a win, and he was tagged with his eighth loss instead of collecting what would have been his seventh victory.
The offense was the bigger problem by far. Jonathan Aranda and Junior Caminero were the only Rays to record multiple hits, finishing with two apiece.
Everyone else in the lineup combined for just one hit. Texas starter Cal Quantrill kept Tampa Bay in check, giving up one run on two hits over 5.1 innings.
He struck out seven and issued only one walk.
Tampa Bay had a real chance to flip the game in the fourth inning after falling behind 2-0. Yandy Diaz opened the frame with a strikeout, continuing a rough night at the plate.
Aranda followed with a single, Caminero doubled him to third, and then Cedric Mullins reached on catcher’s interference to load the bases for Chandler Simpson. But the inning ended in stunning fashion when Simpson rolled a ground ball right back to Quantrill, who fired home to start a 1-2-3 double play.
The Rays finally got on the board in the sixth. Caminero tripled in Yandy Diaz on a ball to left that got past a sliding Langford. That cut the deficit to 2-1 and gave Tampa Bay a shot to tie it, but Mullins struck out swinging to end the threat.
Instead of a shutdown inning, the Rangers answered with a punch of their own. Matz came on and gave up a homer to Austin Wynns, the nine-hole hitter, who launched his first of the season to make it 3-1. Texas added another run in the eighth, and that was that.
With the loss and the Yankees beating the White Sox, the Rays’ division lead is down to a game and a half, though they still sit two up in the loss column. Legumina will open for Tampa Bay on Wednesday night, with Seymour handling most of the innings. The Rays have now scored just five runs over their last three games, even while going 2-1 in that stretch.
In Other News...
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Peralta would come with the kind of short-term urgency that often defines deadline deals, since he is headed for free agency after this season. Neto, by contrast, would be the sort of controlled addition that can reshape a roster well beyond October, with team control running through 2029. For Tampa Bay, the appeal is obvious, but the real question is how far the Rays are willing to go to chase both present help and future stability in the same market. [Read more 🡒]