Rays believe big road trip has them back on track

TORONTO -- April showers are definitively a thing of the past.

The Rays’ budding turnaround has proved as much, even though their seven-game, all-AL East road trip ended with a 5-2 loss to the Blue Jays on Sunday afternoon at Rogers Centre.

Resurging bats and timely pitching performances led Tampa Bay to a 5-2 stretch between Boston and Toronto, giving the club 11 wins in 17 games this month. Everyone in the clubhouse believes that the rise is just beginning, too.

“I wish we could have finished a little stronger, but certainly pleased with the way that we performed,” said manager Kevin Cash. “Definitely a lot of close ballgames.”

Trends and superstitions are certainly fun -- and who’s to say the City Connect unis are not what sparked this great run? But it’s always been about returning to what this team does best.

That begins with the bullpen, where Jason Adam no longer stands alone as the only bona fide high-leverage arm. After running into all kinds of trouble in March and April, Rays relievers have gone from stable to dominant this month.

During the road trip, that group combined for 25 1/3 innings with two earned runs allowed over seven games. The Rays needed every bit of that dominance, too, considering all five of their wins came by a margin of two runs or fewer.

“Pretty tremendous,” said Cash. “It's a group that we felt, coming out of Spring Training, was going to be a big, strong point of our team. And it feels like it's headed that way. They had to really pitch well in some tight circumstances, and I felt they did that.”

Contributions are coming from all corners of the ‘pen -- from Manuel Rodríguez’s 1 2/3 scoreless innings with four strikeouts on Sunday to Garrett Cleavinger’s third save of the year on Saturday and Pete Fairbanks’ streak of four scoreless outings after a stint on the injured list.

While the Rays continue the search for true dominance from their starters, reestablishing the confidence in their relievers was a crucial step.

“The start of the season is always hit or miss with certain guys -- myself included,” Cleavinger said on Saturday. “Started off pretty rough, and then we get some games under our belt and we all kind of get in a rhythm.”

The same can be said for this offense, which has gradually found its footing behind the rise of Yandy Díaz. The reigning batting champ went 9-for-29 (.310) with four RBIs and five walks during the road trip. Díaz believes there’s room for more, though, repeatedly stating that he doesn’t feel 100% back to where he was last season. But you can already see the difference his bat makes even at half capacity.

Pair that with the return of Josh Lowe and Jonathan Aranda, and the Rays’ lineup looks much more balanced already, outscoring opponents by eight runs (79-71) in May.

In Díaz’s words, it was all “a matter of time.”

“I’m happy for us,” Díaz said in Spanish on Saturday. “We didn’t start well, but the guys have been making their adjustments and things are starting to go well for us.”

The Rays have posted a .710 OPS this month, a significant improvement from their .661 mark between March and April. Still, this team could be doing more damage -- you need look no further than last season to see it.

That looks like the next step, and it’s a big reason why Tampa Bay believes that there’s another gear to this current hot stretch. Getting Brandon Lowe back from the injured list should help with that -- and he seems to be nearing activation after back-to-back rehab appearances with Triple-A Durham on Saturday and Sunday -- but Randy Arozarena also needs to find a happy medium between going 0-for-4 and exclusively crushing homers.

That would certainly make it easier to turn some of these nail-biters into comfortable wins -- and to ensure the Rays remain on the good side of .500.

“Maybe they’re growing accustomed to it,” Cash said of the narrow victories his team pulled off during the road trip. “But I wouldn’t mind the more separated win.”