CLEVELAND -- For worse or better, the main storylines that have surrounded the Indians this season have been their youth and their bullpen. Both were the focal points in Thursday night’s 5-4 extra-inning loss to the Rays at Progressive Field.

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James Karinchak was summoned from the bullpen to close out the game in the top of the ninth, but he was quickly in trouble after giving up a leadoff homer to Yandy Díaz. He appeared to have righted the ship, recording consecutive outs before issuing a walk to Ji-Man Choi. Brett Phillips entered to pinch-run for Choi, and his wheels came in handy when a 2-1 heater was laced off the left-center-field wall by Brandon Lowe to knot the score at 4-4.

“Unfortunately, failure is a part of the game,” Karinchak said. “You know that coming in. But I'm going to keep trusting the process, keep sticking to myself and keep working on it every day and believing in myself. Unfortunately, there's bumps in the road, but you keep on board.”

Karinchak and Emmanuel Clase both had their hiccups as soon as the bullpen started to get used more often, once injuries plagued the starting rotation and the relief corps had to pick up more innings. Bryan Shaw, who had been one of the other more reliable arms to start the season, has also experienced his highs and lows, and he gave up the winning RBI single to Austin Meadows in the 10th. But the club knows it wouldn’t still have a winning record without its bullpen.

The Indians have had to turn to their bullpen more this season than in recent years. When Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac and Aaron Civale were all in the rotation, the relievers had smaller workloads as the trio regularly turned in outings of at least six innings every time they toed the rubber. From the start of the season until Civale was placed on the injured list on June 24, the Indians’ bullpen owned the highest strikeouts-per-nine-innings ratio in the Majors at 11.24.

During that stretch, the relievers collectively had the sixth-best ERA (3.42) of all 30 MLB clubs. Since Civale’s injury, the bullpen has taken on more innings, but has found ways to get creative and keep opponents off the board. In that span, the ‘pen has posted the third-best ERA in the Majors (3.11), even though it dropped to the 13th best strikeouts-per-nine-innings ratio (9.86).

“I’ll reiterate it again: We’re not here without our bullpen,” Indians starter Cal Quantrill said. “I don’t care what happened today; it means nothing to me. I think that our bullpen is top five, if not the best bullpen in baseball. We’re not even sniffing .500 without them.”

Although it came down to the bullpen in Thursday’s loss, the disaster could’ve been avoided (hindsight is always 20/20) without some miscues by Daniel Johnson in right field. The first two runs Tampa Bay scored were products of Johnson misplaying two fly balls in his direction. The first came in the fourth inning, as he attempted to make a diving catch on a ball toward the right-field line. The ball fell under his glove and rolled to the wall, allowing Díaz to log a triple before eventually scoring on Kevin Kiermaier's sacrifice fly.

Three innings later, Francisco Mejía picked up a triple of his own as Johnson attempted to track down a fly ball near the wall, but turned the wrong direction as the ball dropped a few feet away, allowing Mejía to get all the way to third before, again, eventually scoring.

“I hope so,” Indians manager Terry Francona said, when asked if this was a learning experience for Johnson. “Because it needs to be. We can't continue to make mistakes over and over. Being young is one thing, but we still have to play the game right.”

The loss dropped Cleveland (48-46) to nine games back of the first-place White Sox (58-38), who had the night off on Thursday.

“Today, it didn’t go the way we wanted, that’s all right,” Quantrill said. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get after it again. I think we got a lot of hungry players on this team. We got a lot of guys who are out to prove something. There’s a reason we play so many games every season. I think it makes a good baseball player if you can put one behind you and show up the next day for work.”