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In hindsight, the game ended there. But it\u2019s not like the Rays had no chances.<\/p>\n
They came up in the bottom of the first inning down 4-0, and Yandy Diaz<\/a> led off with a home run. Aha, we all thought, the Rays are down but they are going to chip away at this lead!<\/p>\n That optimism seemed to be warranted. Jonathan Aranda<\/a> singled and Junior Caminero<\/a> walked. One out later, Chandler Simpson<\/a> walked to load the bases.<\/p>\n But Ben Williamson<\/a> struck out. Yeah, that happens. But he struck out looking\u2026on a ball.<\/p>\n OK, Yandy had earlier had an unsuccessful challenge, maybe Williamson thought he\u2019d get grief for wasting the second challenge in just the first inning? But all the strategic thinking around challenges is that you want to use them in a high leverage situation? Like\u2026.having bases loaded where a walk drives in a run and a strikeout greatly diminishes your chances of scoring that inning? And in fact, after this strikeout, Nick Fortes<\/a> lined out and the inning ended.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n When the Rays didn\u2019t have bad judgement they had bad luck. They did score twice in the fifth inning, making the score 6-3 \u2014 not a blowout! So that optimism returned when they loaded the bases in the sixth. Jonathan Aranda did hit a nice liner into the outfield that could have brought home a few runs, but Joe Adell made a terrific catch for the final out of the inning.<\/p>\n After that, from the Rays perspective, it was garbage time. They went with a recent callup from Durham, Andrew Wantz<\/a>, a 30 year old reliever, who played the role of putting the game completely out of reach. He gave up 5 earned runs, and he did all that with just two walks and two hits! Impressive! (he also hit two batters, and some of the runs scored when Cole Sulser<\/a>, replacing him, gave up a home run).<\/p>\n Just hard to find any bright spots today, although the Yandy-Aranda\u2014Junior part of the lineup contributed. Here\u2019s what the rest of the lineup looked like:<\/p>\n It\u2019s one thing when your 7-9 hitters don\u2019t contribute, but when it\u2019s your 4-9 hitters doing so little, well, you aren\u2019t generating much offense.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n I know this is a baseball cliche but I think it rings true here. The Rays winning nearly every day was not sustainable, but I don\u2019t think this string of blow-out losses is the way they will be playing for the rest of the year either. Shane McClanahan<\/a> will try to turn this ship around tomorrow, but he can\u2019t do it alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drew Rasmussen put in one of his worst performances of the year, getting through just four innings while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[294367,38377,271469,158694,103430,71505,12942,9878,2322,363,39906,213805,99,974,40913,180941,102536],"class_list":["post-675088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-andrew-wantz","tag-ben-williamson","tag-chandler-simpson","tag-cole-sulser","tag-drew-rasmussen","tag-first-inning","tag-jonathan-aranda","tag-junior-caminero","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-mlb","tag-nick-fortes","tag-shane-mcclanahan","tag-sports","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-the-rays","tag-wade-meckler","tag-yandy-diaz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/994a25dc033d9a435755a72d00e82891.jpeg\"\/)
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