After chaotic inning on defense, Rays vow to 'clean it up'

ST. PETERSBURG -- The way things were going for four innings Wednesday night, it wasn’t hard to imagine the Rays pulling out a series victory in their return to Tropicana Field.

After giving up a leadoff homer to Nico Hoerner, starter Joe Boyle retired 11 of the Cubs’ next 12 batters in impressively efficient fashion. Tampa Bay’s lineup manufactured a run in the third inning to tie it up, putting the team in position to battle for a series-clinching win the rest of the way.

Then the wheels fell off in an ugly fifth inning, and the main culprit was a familiar one: sloppy, mistake-filled defense. The Rays committed three errors as they gave up five runs in the fifth and went on to lose to the Cubs, 6-2, dropping their first home series of the season.

Inconsistent defensive play has unfortunately and unexpectedly become a theme for the Rays. They lead the Majors with 17 errors -- no other team has more than 12 -- and Wednesday was their third three-error performance in 12 games this season.

“We’ve got to clean it up,” manager Kevin Cash said.

It was the 11th time in franchise history the Rays committed three errors in the same inning, the first time since the seventh inning of a game in Boston on May 12, 2017, and the first time they’ve ever done so at home.

“Innings like that happen,” second baseman Ben Williamson said. “We've just got to be cleaner.”

Boyle was hardly blameless in the big inning, though. He was excellent in the early going, cruising through four innings on only 50 pitches with just one walk and three strikeouts. But he lost the zone at times in the fifth, and the Cubs made him pay for it.

Carson Kelly led off the inning with a double to left, the Cubs’ first hit since Hoerner’s homer. Boyle then issued consecutive five-pitch walks to Moisés Ballesteros and Dansby Swanson to load the bases.

“Trying to be too perfect, I think -- I can fall victim to that,” Boyle said. “But I think I just didn't make pitches when I needed to.”

Then came the big hit from Michael Conforto, who ripped a first-pitch fastball from Boyle to center field. Kelly and Ballesteros scored, and it seemed like Swanson would stop at third. That’s when the Rays’ defense made matters worse.

After Jonny DeLuca made an admirable but unsuccessful leaping attempt at the wall, Jake Fraley’s relay throw rolled past Taylor Walls and Williamson to Jonathan Aranda. That prompted Swanson to sprint and slide home, putting the Cubs ahead by three, and Conforto advanced to third when Aranda yanked his throw past catcher Hunter Feduccia.

The first error was given to Fraley, but he didn’t deserve it. Walls and Williamson both had a chance to secure the throw before it got to Aranda. Walls passed on the first opportunity to field the short hop, while Williamson said he was looking to see where the runner was and whether the third-base coach was sending him home.

“By the time I turned back around, the ball was behind me,” Williamson said. “It can’t get by both of us. That can’t happen.”

But that still wasn’t the end of a painful inning.

With one out, Hoerner perfectly placed a grounder down the first-base line for a double that drove in Conforto. Up came Michael Busch, who tapped a grounder in front of the plate. Feduccia scrambled to retrieve the ball but rushed a low throw that Aranda had no chance to snag before the ball caromed into Tampa Bay’s bullpen, allowing Hoerner to score from second.

“I spun around too quick,” Feduccia said. “Just need to slow the game down a little bit right there.”

Boyle gave way to reliever Jesse Scholtens, who was recalled from Triple-A Durham before the game with starter Drew Rasmussen officially going on the paternity list following the birth of his second child. The right-hander Scholtens played his part to perfection, breezing through 4 2/3 innings in the longest scoreless relief outing by a Rays pitcher since Josh Fleming went six against the Astros on April 26, 2023.

But the Rays offered little resistance against the Cubs’ pitching staff. They tied the game in the third, when DeLuca singled, stole second, moved to third on a productive out by Walls and scored on Aranda’s sacrifice fly. But they didn’t score again until Fraley drove in Aranda in the eighth, and they managed only five hits -- all singles -- on the night.

“We may have gotten a little too big in certain situations instead of being true to us and just [putting] the ball in play and [creating] havoc on the basepaths,” DeLuca said. “Credit to them.”