Rays lament blown chances after rare oh-fer with RISP

ST. PETERSBURG -- The way this season has gone, and especially the way this final regular-season homestand has unfolded, it felt like the Rays had more magic in the making late Friday night at Tropicana Field.

Trailing by three runs in the sixth inning, they loaded the bases and sent up Jake Fraley, sidelined for most of the past four months, to pinch-hit and potentially play the role of hero.

Down by three in the ninth, they worked a bunch of tough at-bats and benefited from a few fortunate bounces to scratch across a run. When Ryan Vilade struck out with two outs but still reached on a wild pitch to load the bases for Chandler Simpson, you could practically picture another walk-off celebration carrying into the home clubhouse.

But it wasn’t meant to be this time. Fraley struck out against reliever Wyatt Olds in the sixth, and Simpson grounded out to leave the bases loaded in the ninth. So ended an uncharacteristically un-clutch performance by the Rays, who lost their series opener against the Red Sox, 4-2, before a crowd of 23,342 at the Trop.

“We always think something's going to happen to get a win,” Simpson said. “I mean, a lot of things were going our way right there, and it just didn't happen.”

The loss ended Tampa Bay’s six-game winning streak. Combined with the Yankees' 9-2 win at Arizona later Friday night, the Rays saw their edge in the American League East race reduced to four games with nine left to play.

It seems inevitable that the Rays’ four-game series at Yankee Stadium next week will decide the division, one way or another. It’s impossible to avoid the anticipation for that showdown, which has enormous regular-season implications in addition to being a potential postseason preview.

But Friday night’s defeat was a reminder that the Rays can’t afford to look past the Red Sox, who are hoping to punch their ticket to the postseason before leaving town. And this is potentially every bit the potential postseason preview that next week will be. If the season ended today, the Yankees and Red Sox would meet in the AL Wild Card Series, and the winner would face the Rays in the AL Division Series.

Either way, losing Friday night eliminated the already unlikely possibility of seeing the Rays clinch their first division title since 2021 at home. That would have required Tampa Bay pulling off a three-game sweep and the Yankees being swept by the D-backs.

Instead, the Rays were left to lament their many missed opportunities after an extremely rare display at the plate.

“Sometimes they're going to make the pitches, and sometimes we're going to get the hits,” Fraley said. “Tonight, that just wasn't the case for us.”

The club leads the Majors by a considerable margin with a .284 average with runners in scoring position this season. Their .268 average when hitting with two outs is similarly far ahead of the field. When there’s a chance to score, the Rays have thrived by finding holes to produce big hits.

It just didn’t happen against Red Sox starter Ranger Suarez and Boston’s bullpen. The Rays had five hits and a whopping nine walks, but they left 12 runners on base.

“We've been so good at that all season long. We just came up short,” manager Kevin Cash said. “Credit their guys. They made some big pitches.”

It has happened before. In fact, it happened the last time the Rays played the Red Sox on July 19, the finale of Boston’s four-game sweep of Tampa Bay at Fenway Park coming out of the All-Star break.

The Rays went 0-for-15 with runners in scoring position in that 6-1 defeat. That game and Friday night’s 0-for-13 showing are their only two games this season in which they’ve had at least 10 at-bats in those situations without recording a hit.

“Everybody on this team wanted to capitalize on those opportunities,” Yandy Díaz said through interpreter Kevin Vera. “But it's baseball. They just didn't go our way and we missed a few, and ultimately they stacked up.”

The Rays were trying to hit their way out of an early hole because the Red Sox quickly put up four runs against starter Ian Seymour. The left-hander’s main issue was a familiar one: home runs, specifically solo shots.

Seymour allowed a leadoff blast to Roman Anthony, who drove in two more runs on a single in the second, and another to Jahmai Jones leading off the third. Seymour has yielded 21 homers -- with at least one in 15 of his 19 appearances -- since moving back into a starting/bulk-inning role, and 17 of those have been with nobody on base.

“You’ve just got to credit the offense for constantly putting pressure on other teams. You know we're never really out of a game,” Seymour said. “I've just got to do a little better job limiting runs.”