The Rays hadn’t knocked a hit against Royals pitching since the fourth inning on Wednesday night, but they made sure the next one they had counted.

With Kevin Kiermaier as the automatic runner on third base, Manuel Margot’s walk-off single off reliever Tyler Zuber in the bottom of the 10th inning handed the Royals a 2-1 loss at Tropicana Field, setting up the rubber match on Thursday afternoon.

“We’re confident,” Andrew Benintendi said. “It shows we can play with them, pitch with them, hit with them. It’ll be a fun one tomorrow. Good challenge.”

Benintendi was the reason the game went to extras. After falling victim to three stellar catches in center field over two games this series, Benintendi finally placed a ball that was uncatchable by a Tampa Bay center fielder leading off the top of the ninth inning, when he crushed a pitch from reliever J.P. Feyereisen to left-center for the game-tying homer.

“I feel like it goes back to everything I said in the past where, once you hit it, that’s all you can really do,” Benintendi said. “Hopefully it catches some outfield grass or turf. It seems like the last few days, I hit some balls that I was expecting to be hits, and they covered some ground. So it was nice to see one not in a glove.”

But that’s all the offense could muster. In the 10th inning, Michael A. Taylor, who pinch-ran for Jorge Soler as the automatic runner at second base, advanced to third on Adalberto Mondesi’s sacrifice bunt. With one out, the Royals were looking for a ground ball against Feyereisen and the Rays’ drawn-in infield. But Jarrod Dyson had two strikes and lifted a ball to shallow center field, and the Royals didn’t test Kiermaier’s arm after he made the catch for the second out.

Ryan O’Hearn pinch-hit for Nicky Lopez and flied out to Kiermaier to strand Taylor. It’s easy to wonder whether the Royals would attempt a squeeze play with either Dyson or Lopez if he wasn’t pinch-hit for, but the Rays were planning for that.

“They were playing down our throat right there, too,” manager Mike Matheny said. “That isn't going to fool anybody. It'd been a tough one to pull off. You have a different perspective on that when it's first and third, and the first baseman is holding the runner. But with first base open, the first baseman [isn't holding]. They brought in a guy [Mike Brosseau] who plays third base. He's an athletic guy. It's going to be a tough play if you go that direction."

Instead, the Royals watched Margot have the kind of at-bat they wanted Dyson to have, poking a single through the infield to score the runner.

“These new extra-inning rules put a premium on the first team that gets it,” Benintendi said. “There’s a lot of pressure on you to score, because obviously if you don’t, the home team has a huge advantage already.”

The Royals didn’t have many opportunities to capitalize before the 10th, either. They were stymied by Rays starter Tyler Glasnow, who struck out 11 in eight innings, allowing just three hits with two walks. Kelvin Gutierrez’s single with one out in the fifth broke up a perfect game, and Mondesi’s single later that inning was the most pressure Glasnow faced all night.

Whit Merrifield walked in the sixth and got to third base, but he was left stranded, too. It was the second day in a row the Royals had double-digit strikeouts, with 14 in the series opener and 12 on Wednesday.

“We’d like to see more offense, to see more pressure, but to take this team 1-1 into the 10th inning, for us to come back late, we never take those for granted,” Matheny said.

The Royals have matched the Rays’ pitching in both games. On Wednesday, starter Mike Minor held Tampa Bay to one run in five innings and matched a season high with nine strikeouts. But it was the four walks and a few long at-bats that rocketed his pitch count up to 96 by the end of five innings, causing Matheny to call on the bullpen even though Minor lobbied to stay in.

Kansas City’s bullpen continued what Minor started, with Greg Holland, Scott Barlow and Josh Staumont -- three of the team’s highest leverage relievers -- shutting the Rays down over three scoreless innings. Jake Brentz worked around back-to-back walks in the ninth with a strikeout and a groundout to send the game to extra innings.

“I almost like [the pitching duel] because the innings are so quick,” Minor said. “Some guys like to rest, but the rhythm of the game is back and forth, and back and forth. Before you know it, you’re deeper in the game.

“I knew it was going to be a tough matchup with Glasnow in there. Our guys were trying to get anything they can.”