Rays 2, Diamondbacks 3
Record: 23-13
Attendance: 8,663. For once it is good that so few people actually saw this performance. The Rays should be hoping the TV audience was down too.
This was a game that got away. From the top of the first, when an inning-ending double play was botched by a bad throw to first and the D-backs scored when they shouldn't have, you could feel the bad vibes entering the building. In the bottom of the 12th, Tommy Pham (who has to take a remedial class in base running) drew a promising leadoff walk and was promptly picked off first by D-back pitcher Archie Bradley. The few people left in the stands could feel the adrenaline pumping with a fast runner on first to lead off the inning, but when Pham let himself be picked off, it was like the air had been suddenly let out of the building. The Rays seemed to feel it too as the D-backs won the game in the top of the 13th on a cue ball single off the end of Wilmer Flores' bat that floated in slow motion just over Brandon Lowe's glove and barely made it past the infield into right field.
In between the first and thirteenth innings, the Rays squandered opportunity after opportunity, the worst coming in the eighth when they had drawn to within one run and had the bases loaded and nobody out. A grounder to short forced one out at the plate. Next Brandon Lowe, the April Rookie of the Month, struck out, the third of five consecutive strikeouts on the night for him. Willie Adames then lined out to short. Futility in spades. And in the bottom of the ninth, Kevin Kiermaier pinch hit the tying run home with a single to center, only to turn too wide and get into a run down between first and second, which made Tommy Pham think he could score the game winning run with a sprint to the plate. He was out. Extra innings began, and the rest is history as the Rays extended their winless extra inning streak to 0-4.
The Rays struck out 23 times on the night and left eleven on base. It was brutally hard to watch. And it took four hours and 39 minutes.
Pitching kept the Rays in the game. Charlie Morton, not at his best, gave up two runs in his five innings on seven hits, four walks, and eight strikeouts. Six pitchers followed giving up only two hits for the rest of the way, but Adam Kolarek, who gave up a pair of ninth inning homers the night before, walked two and gave up a hit before he was replaced by Chaz Roe, who gave up the cue ball single to right that sealed the Rays' doom for the night.
And there was more bad news as catcher Mike Zunino went down with a tightened left quad. Tests will determine the extensiveness of the injury, which came on the same day backup catcher Michael Perez was placed on the IL with a right oblique strain. Nick Ciuffo, just recalled from Durham with a BA hovering around .200, was pressed into service in the late innings striking out twice in two plate appearances.
And the Yankees come to town tomorrow.
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