Undone by one bad break, Rays look for quick bounce-back

TORONTO -- Once again, the Rays were burned by a bad break.

On Friday night, a few errors toppled the club’s historic season-opening win streak. On Saturday afternoon, Tampa Bay’s misplay in the fourth inning of a 5-2 loss to the Blue Jays was much more subtle, but just as costly.

It all began when reliever Trevor Kelley didn’t stop his hands before delivering to the plate -- an easy balk call -- and Alejandro Kirk got a free trot from first to second base. Those extra 90 feet were game-changing. Whit Merrifield immediately knocked a double off the wall, allowing Kirk, one of the slowest runners in baseball, to lumber home. Danny Jansen then lined an RBI single to center, bumping Toronto’s lead to two runs.

“It was a frustrating [fourth] inning,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said after the game at Rogers Centre. “[Kelley] had two outs three pitches in, and then it just unraveled for a run there. The balk doesn’t help.”

Balks are often fluky, but for Kelley, they have been a recurring issue. He’s been called for two of them in Triple-A Durham this season, and Saturday was his third overall violation in 2023.

“I come set for just a nice little pop, and then go at them when I’m trying to quick pitch,” Kelley said, explaining his mistake. “Sometimes I get away with a lot of [balks], and [the umpires] have just been on it this year.”

• Thompson placed on IL; Kelley recalled

That sequence of events pushed the Rays further behind in a game that was already giving them trouble. Toronto starter Yusei Kikuchi carved up the Rays struck out nine Tampa Bay hitters through six innings, steamrolling any momentum the visiting team could muster.

“He had a big fastball, 94, 96 [mph],” Cash said of Kikuchi, “changed speeds well, got his back-door cutter going and then he started throwing some cutters down and in to righties. So he pitched really, really well.”

Tampa Bay worked hard to jack up Kikuchi’s pitch count -- typically a recipe for success against the lefty’s spotty command. But this game was atypical in a multitude of ways. First, it was rare to see Kikuchi look so ferocious on the mound, and it was even rarer for the Rays’ bats to struggle against a left-hander.

Entering Saturday, the club’s lineup featured six hitters with an OPS over 1.000 against southpaws this season. As a unit, the Rays were the best in the Majors versus lefties, leading in both OPS (.939) and home runs (10) ahead of their matchup with Kikuchi. That’s why it was surprising when only Taylor Walls broke through with a solo home run in the fourth.

“He’s had good at-bats,” Cash said of his second baseman. “We were all very confident at the end of last year that [Walls] was not the hitter that was maybe displayed throughout the 2022 season.”

Walls, who has eight hits through 10 games, is a player to watch this year. Thanks to a hoover of a glove, he was a valuable prospect as he chugged through the Rays’ Minor League system, but he’s been well below average at the dish in parts of three Major League seasons, posting a 68 OPS+. Walls’ skillset makes his upside remarkable, so even a marginal improvement on offense would pair nicely with the AL-best 2.8 defensive WAR he produced in 2022, per Baseball Reference.

As Saturday’s game went on, the lead got further out of Tampa’s reach. Reliever Josh Fleming walked four hitters (one was an intentional free pass), leading to another Blue Jays run.

Some superb baserunning by Wander Franco earned Tampa Bay a tally in the eighth, but the Rays were still down three when they met Toronto closer Jordan Romano in the ninth.

The club rallied to load the bases with two outs when Franco, ever the late-game hero, lined a ball right off Romano’s midsection. The right-hander winced and staggered off the mound, corralling the ball and flipping to first for the final out -- a resounding bad break for the Rays.

“[Franco] did all he could do there and barreled that ball up,” Walls said. “If [Romano] is not standing right there, we might not even be talking about [a loss] right now.”

After winning 13 straight games entering this series versus the Blue Jays, the Rays aren’t happy about dropping two in a row. But there’s no panic in the clubhouse, either. That historic streak bred a deep, addictive familiarity with winning baseball games. As the Rays try to avoid a sweep on Sunday, they’ll do all they can to restore that victorious feeling.

“We don’t come to the field [feeling like it’s] OK to lose,” Walls said. “We hate losing probably more than we love winning, so that’s never the goal. … Everybody in the clubhouse is going to come in tomorrow and the last thing on our minds is going to be coming out with a loss.”