Tough road trip sees Rays hit another speed bump in rubber game

SEATTLE -- The Rays will fly across the country, sleep, wake up on Thursday, and for the first time in the last two weeks, they won’t have a game to play.

For a team that’s been grinding through a grueling schedule, wading its way through pitching injuries and scuffling offensively, that might be just what it needs.

Tampa Bay’s 6-2 loss to Seattle in the rubber game on Wednesday afternoon at T-Mobile Park punctuated this difficult August stretch, one in which the Rays played games on 13 consecutive days, 10 of them in the road trip that just concluded.

In the finale against Seattle, Tampa Bay’s offense once again couldn’t do enough while the beleaguered state of the pitching staff led to a bullpen game that didn’t go the Rays’ way. The final tally was a 4-6 trip that left the club at 66-67 for the season.

The increasingly familiar narrative of a consistent lack of run support continued on Wednesday. Maybe a day off can change the music from the skipping of a broken record to something more melodic.

“Just kind of tough, really,” said right fielder Josh Lowe, who was one of the team’s only bright spots at the plate in the series, batting .455 (5-for-11) with two home runs, including one in the second inning against Mariners righty Luis Castillo that gave the Rays their only lead in the rubber game.

“We ran into some good teams that are throwing the ball well and we just couldn’t really get much momentum going offensively.”

Part of that had to do with Castillo’s moxie and resilience, and part of it had to do with the Mariners coming alive and taking advantage of opportunities against bulk reliever Tyler Alexander.

With the game tied at 1 and Seattle having faced opener Drew Rasmussen (two innings, 26 pitches) and reliever Kevin Kelly (1 2/3 innings, 26 pitches), Tampa Bay turned to lefty Alexander to take it the rest of the way. He did that, but he surrendered four runs in the pivotal bottom of the fifth inning.

Dylan Moore laced a one-out double down the left-field line, and after Alexander fanned Mitch Garver for the second out of the inning, he elevated a fastball that Victor Robles hit over the left-field fence.

The next batter, J.P. Crawford, worked a walk, and Julio Rodríguez followed with a homer of his own that gave Seattle a 5-1 lead.

“I thought I threw a lot of really good pitches,” Alexander said. “They put some good swings on them. I can’t do anything about that, except the walk. The walk hurt. I hate walks in general. I pride myself on being a control guy. When I walk people, that’s just not true. So free bags suck.”

But manager Kevin Cash pointed out that the Rays’ offense needed to do a better job than two runs on six hits. In the first inning, Junior Caminero hit a two-out triple, the first of his career, but Christopher Morel struck out to end that threat.

And in the sixth inning, the Rays strung together three hits and could only score one run, which occurred on a Dylan Carlson single that chased Castillo. But they left runners on the corners when José Caballero popped out to third off reliever Austin Voth.

It was emblematic of a tough West Coast swing that was finally over once Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz had put the finishing touches on the Rays’ 1-2 series in Seattle.

“We did some OK things,” Cash said. “Castillo … we’ve seen him have better command and better feel for his offspeed pitches, but that’s a credit to him and how talented he is that he battles through maybe not having his best stuff.

“And then, he kind of got in a rhythm and kept us quiet. So we couldn’t get much going off of him. It’s frustrating. Today’s really frustrating. We needed to find a way to win the game and we didn’t do anything good enough to win the game.”