Club built on doing little things right is suddenly getting them wrong

MILWAUKEE – The Rays spent six months proving that doing the little things right would win baseball games. Over the past two nights, they've discovered how costly it is when they don’t.

The crisp, fundamentally sound play that vaulted Tampa Bay into the World Series has been missing in action so far. A series of uncharacteristic mistakes flushed an early four-run lead in the Rays’ 5-4 loss to the Brewers in Game 2 at American Family Field on Saturday night.

“The lesson is that we’ve got to play clean vs. those guys,” said left fielder Chandler Simpson. “They grind, and we’ve got to do the same.”

Whether it was Jonathan Aranda fumbling a couple of chances, Liam Hicks being waved around third base or a ball popping out of Simpson’s glove, these hardly looked like the Rays who paced the American League with 98 wins.

“Today,” manager Kevin Cash said, “was probably not our best day.”

Aranda said no rah-rah postgame speech was delivered in the visitors’ clubhouse, no urgent messaging to keep their heads up. The Rays know what to do: They’ve done it all year, posting a 25-14 record in one-run games during the regular season.

That’s the team that needs to show up on Monday.

“I guarantee you one thing: that nobody in this clubhouse wants to play the baseball that we've played the last couple days,” third baseman Junior Caminero said. “That's not who we are.”

Momentum seemed on Tampa Bay’s side in the first inning, when Simpson and Caminero stroked RBI singles and Hicks cleared the wall for a two-run homer – stunning, considering Logan Henderson hadn’t permitted more than three earned runs in any Major League game. Five batters in, Tampa Bay had hung four on him.

Milwaukee’s chip-away response began in the home half, helped along when Aranda couldn’t secure a foul pop near the screen beyond first base, extending William Contreras’ at-bat.

Contreras capitalized, delivering an RBI single past second baseman Richie Palacios, who’d broken in on a hit-and-run play. Garrett Mitchell later added a run-scoring hit to halve the Brewers’ deficit.

If Aranda had caught that ball, might the Series be tied right now?

“It may be different. We’ll never know,” Cash said. “Look, we didn’t play our cleanest baseball game by any stretch. We pride ourselves on doing everything we can to support the pitchers, making plays behind them.”

Aranda wasn’t charged with an error for the first-inning play, but he committed a clear one in the fourth, allowing a one-out David Hamilton grounder to go through his legs as Cooper Pratt scored Milwaukee’s third run.

“I didn’t read the spin off the bat well,” Aranda said through an interpreter. “I thought it was going to tail in a different direction, and it ultimately didn't. So I just kind of whacked it with my glove. It was a play that I could have made.”

Tampa Bay was too aggressive on the basepaths in the sixth, when third-base coach Brady Williams waved Hicks around on Victor Mesa Jr.’s two-out single.

Hicks hadn’t even touched third base when Jackson Chourio fielded the ball in shallow left field. Chourio made a two-hop throw home that cut down Hicks in plenty of time.

“We’ve made some mistakes on the bases for sure, going back to [Game 1],” Cash said. “I support Brady’s decision, without a doubt. Two outs right there, you know how talented that pitching staff is. How many times are you going to piece together that many singles? Let’s see if we can put some pressure on somebody else.

“To their credit, they have responded with everything we’ve thrown at them.”

Sal Frelick launched a game-tying homer off Ian Seymour in the sixth, a frame that also saw Simpson unable to secure a Christian Yelich single, though that didn’t lead to further damage. Pratt’s seventh-inning RBI single put the Brewers ahead.

And yet, for as un-Rays-like as it all was, Tampa Bay still had a chance.

Jonny DeLuca opened the ninth with a double, and after Mesa struck out, he advanced to third when pinch-hitter Ben Williamson grounded out. Aaron Ashby snapped off a curve that Yandy Díaz offered at; though he initially howled in protest, Díaz later acknowledged that he’d swung.

“In the moment, yeah, I disagreed,” Díaz said through an interpreter. “The umpire said it was a swing. It is what it is.”

Díaz’s strikeout dipped the Rays to 3-for-20 (.150) with runners in scoring position in the World Series. They led the Majors with a .283 average during the regular season.

“I think the game is speeding up on us right now,” DeLuca said. “We’ve just got to be able to slow it down and do our jobs, and just clean everything up in all phases of the game.”

The Rays are scheduled to fly home Sunday afternoon, eager for what awaits them in St. Pete – and determined to leave whatever just happened in Milwaukee behind.

“We have to take advantage of that,” Aranda said. “A big thing is, we just have to limit our mistakes. That can't happen moving forward.”