TAMPA — Asked on Saturday what had fueled the seven-game winning streak that put the Rays right back in the American League Wild Card race, starter Drew Rasmussen pointed to the position that they had put themselves in. Their backs were against the wall, so their focus couldn’t stray far from the game at hand.
“I don’t know if desperation is a theme,” Rasmussen said. “When you’re in the position where you have to win every day, and that’s all that really matters, it’s cool to see how this group has responded.”
And they only have 19 games left to play. If they get hot and get some help, like they did while trimming their deficit from 7 1/2 games to two over the course of a week, they’ll have a chance. If not, they’re entering the final three weeks of their season.
“We just have to come play hard and take everybody’s head off,” third baseman Junior Caminero said through interpreter Eddie Rodriguez.
The Rays have won 10 of their last 15 games, but there’s a catch: They’ve gone 2-5 against the Guardians and 8-0 against everyone else. The Guardians clinched the season series against the Rays, giving them the edge in a postseason tiebreaker scenario.
But Tampa Bay will have to play at a high level for that to come into play, and the club has the hardest remaining schedule in the AL.
As Rasmussen put it after Sunday’s game, “Every single game matters.”
“If we go out and we play hard and we take care of our business, we are fortunate enough to be in the position that good things can still happen,” Rasmussen added.
The Rays made a few good things happen on Sunday, despite the outcome. Rasmussen worked around three walks and uncharacteristic command to pitch five shutout innings, his 10th scoreless start of at least five innings this year, the most in a single season in franchise history.
They played good defense, highlighted by a pair of plays at the plate. In the third inning, rookie shortstop Carson Williams made an excellent relay throw to catcher Nick Fortes, who tagged out Steven Kwan. In the sixth, lefty reliever Garrett Cleavinger flipped a comebacker from Daniel Schneemann back to Fortes to cut down José Ramírez.
But the Guardians still got to Cleavinger, ending his 20-inning scoreless streak dating back to mid-July. Ramírez tripled home one run, and Gabriel Arias knocked in another with a single off right-hander Kevin Kelly.
Manager Kevin Cash took responsibility for that sequence, noting Cleavinger’s substantial workload. The lefty said he felt “OK” on the mound, but he has pitched in five of the last seven games and eight times over the past 14 days.
“I see a guy that I’ve asked a lot of, and he’s gassed. And that’s on me,” Cash said. “ I feel bad about Cleav, because he’s given us everything he could have, and he still threw the ball pretty well.”
But the Rays were limited to just one run, which came on Williams’ second big league homer in the fifth inning. They had a chance to strike first, but a rare mental mistake came back to haunt them.
With Caminero on first and two outs in the first inning, Brandon Lowe launched a soaring fly ball that seemed to be bound for the Rays’ bullpen down the right-field line. Instead, it hooked back into fair territory and landed on the warning track for a single.
“I’ve never seen a ball in that bullpen come back,” Lowe said. “We’ve seen it in the left-field bullpen come back, but I mean, I thought somebody in the bullpen was going to catch it, it was so far over there.”
The ball’s trajectory led Lowe and Caminero to believe it would land foul, so neither ran hard. But when it landed fair, rather than Caminero scoring and Lowe moving into scoring position, the Rays had runners on the corners before Christopher Morel flied out.
“There’s no excuse. It was my mistake. I admitted it,” Caminero said. “There were two outs. I should have run faster.”
Caminero said he apologized to Cash for the mental lapse. Lowe said they both should have been running harder.
“Nobody feels worse than them. I understand that it’s uncharacteristic for both of them,” Cash said. “They’re both extremely talented players. Mistakes happen.”
At this point, the Rays just can’t afford to make many more.
