Rays' reliance on HRs not paying dividends

For a fraction of a second, it seemed as though the Rays might hit their way back into Game 1 of the World Series on Tuesday night at Globe Life Field. They no longer had to deal with Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, who had left the game after six dominant innings. In the seventh inning, with runners on first and second base, one out and a seven-run deficit cut to five, Mike Zunino ripped a line drive back toward the mound.

Game	Date	Result	Highlights
Gm 1	Oct. 20	LAD 8, TB 3	Watch
Gm 2	Oct. 21	TB 6, LAD 4	Watch
Gm 3	Oct. 23	LAD 6, TB 2	Watch
Gm 4	Oct. 24	TB 8, LAD 7	Watch
Gm 5	Oct. 25	LAD 4, TB 2	Watch
Gm 6	Oct. 27	LAD 3, TB 1	Watch

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Zunino thought he saw Dodgers second baseman Kiké Hernández break the wrong way. If the ball got past reliever Victor González, the Rays might have had another run and some momentum on their side for the first time all night. It seemed like a potentially game-changing moment.

“For a brief second,” Zunino said. “Until he caught it.”

González snared Zunino’s 105.6 mph shot, defying the ball’s .660 expected batting average, according to Statcast, then turned and fired the ball to Hernández to complete the inning-ending double play.

So ended the Rays’ only real rally of the night in an 8-3 loss.

“We’ve got to be encouraged that we had good at-bats. Z smoked that ball. I don’t understand how González even caught it,” manager Kevin Cash said. “You never know. [If] it’s too hot coming up or checks up or something, that would have been nice.”

The Dodgers displayed the depth and functionality of their lineup in Game 1. Cody Bellinger went deep in the fourth inning. Mookie Betts ran wild on the bases, scored on a contact play in the fifth and homered in the sixth. Los Angeles worked seven walks and made Tampa Bay pitchers throw 174 pitches in eight innings.

The Rays, meanwhile, have largely been dependent on home runs -- especially solo shots -- in the postseason. And there’s nothing wrong with hitting homers, obviously, as teams have gone 32-4 in this postseason when they out-homer their opponent. But Tampa Bay has often struggled this month to find any other form of offense.

“We just have to piece together a little bit better at-bats, really stick to our approaches, whatever that may be. We’ve got to get guys on and try to move base to base and hit homers, do whatever,” said center fielder Kevin Kiermaier, who got the Rays on the board with a solo homer off Kershaw in the fifth inning. “We’ve been doing that all playoffs. It’s nice to get action out there on the bases and put the pressure on the defense with our athleticism, and we just didn’t do that tonight.”

The Rays have scored 70 percent of their postseason runs on homers, up from 41.5 percent during the regular season. They’ve gone deep 26 times in these playoffs, one off the single-postseason record shared by the 2002 Giants and 2017 Astros. Despite that power surge, their lineup has been less productive overall in October. They averaged 4.82 runs per game in the regular season; that has dropped to an even four runs per game in the postseason.

Fourteen of the Rays’ home runs have been solo shots, and another nine have come with just one runner on base. Extended rallies have been hard to come by, as the first inning of Game 1 reminded them.

Yandy Díaz hit a leadoff single off Kershaw and Randy Arozarena worked a one-out walk. But that proved to be a missed opportunity, and the Rays’ last chance for a while, as Hunter Renfroe struck out and Manuel Margot grounded out. After Arozarena’s walk, Kershaw rediscovered his slider, retired 13 straight batters and cruised into the fifth inning.

“Fortunate to get out of that first without any runs, and then after that, I kind of locked it in a little bit better,” Kershaw said. “So the first inning, it’s always kind of hit or miss, just to figure it out, then after that, I started feeling good about it.”

“Kershaw, his resume speaks for itself,” Kiermaier added. “He’s one of the best to ever take the mound for a reason, and he had a game plan to try to really quiet things down from there and he executed great in that sense.”

Kiermaier gave the Rays a jolt in the fifth with his homer to right off a hanging slider to cut the Dodgers’ two-run lead in half. But things fell apart for Tyler Glasnow and Tampa Bay’s pitching staff after that, as they gave up four runs in the fifth and two more in the sixth.

At that point the Rays had gone 44 straight innings without recording a run-scoring hit with a man in scoring position; their last such hit came in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series. But what happened in the seventh might serve as a blueprint for the Rays in Game 2, when they’ll face Tony Gonsolin and a heavy dose of the Dodgers' bullpen.

In the seventh, after Margot singled and Joey Wendle doubled to chase reliever Dylan Floro, Mike Brosseau and Kiermaier strung together consecutive RBI singles off González. Up came Zunino, who was left wondering what might have been, tipping his cap to González and looking ahead to the next contest.

“If it gets by him, who knows what happens?” Zunino said. “But that’s the game of baseball. We have to build off the positive at-bats we had late. Some of the guys had some really good swings on balls. We need to build off that and have some positive at-bats tomorrow.”