TORONTO -- As soon as Bo Bichette reached down and lofted a 3-2 slider toward the left-field fence, Jason Adam turned and grimaced. He hopped in place with his hands at his sides, gritting his teeth as Randy Arozarena drifted back to time his jump.

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Adam felt fine about his pitch execution, placing a slider just below the strike zone. But he had some regrets about the selection and how he came to face the reigning American League Player of the Week with the tying run on second base in the eighth inning.

When the ball cleared the wall, Arozarena crashed into the out-of-town scoreboard and slowly came to a crouch on the warning track. Adam slapped his glove and shouted, a rare display of visible frustration from the genial right-hander.

Bichette’s two-run homer off Adam proved to be the difference Monday night, and the Rays’ losing streak reached three games as they began a five-game, four-day series with a 3-2 defeat to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. The outcome flipped the American League Wild Card standings, as Toronto and Seattle are now tied for the top spot with Tampa Bay a half-game behind.

All of that was going through Adam’s head as Bichette rounded the bases.

“I was really mad. I kind of blacked out a little bit,” Adam said. “I knew the weight of it, that I just potentially lost the game for the guys who battled so hard tonight, so that sucks. And two, there was some doubt in my mind about whether I should go [with a] changeup there, so that's on me. … Those ones hurt.”

Painful nights have been rare for Adam, who has emerged this season as one of the Rays’ most valuable players and one of the Majors’ most effective high-leverage relievers. It was only his third loss and second blown save, and he still sports a 1.54 ERA after his career-high 62nd appearance.

None of that eased Adam’s frustration, especially when the Rays seemed to be on their way to a galvanizing victory after two ugly, lopsided losses to the Yankees over the weekend.

“They're talented over there. I think we match up well to them,” Adam said. “I didn't show that well tonight, but the rest of our pitching staff did.”

After asking left-hander Ryan Yarbrough to save the bullpen Sunday following two short starts in the Bronx, the Rays scrambled to put together a pitching plan for Monday’s series opener. For seven innings, it worked about as well as they could have hoped.

Right-hander Cooper Criswell, a July waiver claim who doesn’t have a spot on Tampa Bay’s 40-man roster, retired the first nine hitters he faced. Criswell learned late Sunday he’d been called up, took a delayed flight Monday morning and pitched in the Majors for the first time since his four-out, three-run debut with the Angels last Aug. 27.

“My heart wasn't beating through my chest, so it was good,” Criswell said. “I felt much more comfortable.”

Criswell allowed one run in the fourth inning but still efficiently recorded 10 outs on 45 pitches. Reliever JT Chargois finished the fourth with a key double-play grounder and pitched a clean fifth. The Rays’ lineup didn’t get much going offensively against José Berríos, which loomed large in the end, but that looked like a key sequence after Randy Arozarena scored on a Manuel Margot grounder in the sixth to make it a 2-1 game.

“Really nice job,” manager Kevin Cash said of Criswell. “And then Shaggy, at the moment, came in [and] I thought got the biggest outs of the game. But it just didn't turn out that way.”

Usually, Adam gets the biggest outs of the game. He entered Monday with the fifth-highest WPA (Win Probability Added, a context-dependent statistic that shows how much a player contributes to his team’s chances of winning) among qualified relievers. But he allowed a leadoff single to Raimel Tapia, retired George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and still had to deal with the red-hot Bichette.

Adam got ahead in the count, 1-2, then Bichette wouldn’t bite on a slider outside the zone. Bichette fouled off a fastball and took another slider, running the count full. Then Adam threw a slider he almost immediately regretted.

“There's a lot I'd like to change about the at-bat. But he's a good hitter, so you've got to tip your cap to a certain extent,” Adam said, “and trust that we'll come back tomorrow and get 'em tomorrow.”