ST. PETERSBURG -- Drew Rasmussen is relentlessly committed to his preparation and his process on the mound, and he always reevaluates his outings the next day with the benefit of time and hindsight.
But he usually knows he’s in good shape when he throws first-pitch strikes and avoids walks. That made his rough start in the Rays' 12-4 loss to the Yankees on Thursday afternoon all the more perplexing and, in his own words, “frustrating.”
Rasmussen threw first-pitch strikes to 12 of the 14 batters he faced. He didn’t walk anyone. Yet he gave up a season-high six runs on seven hits, all in the third inning, and exited after a season-low 2 1/3 innings, a rare clunker for the two-time All-Star.
It was tied for the highest-scoring inning against Rasmussen in his career, and the 35 pitches he threw in the third were tied for the third-most in his career. Yet he wasn’t altogether unhappy with the way he pitched.
“I'll have to go back, reevaluate some things, clean some stuff up, I think,” Rasmussen said. “But I didn't really think stuff or execution was horrible by any means.”
The Rays still had chances to come back. They loaded the bases with nobody out in the third inning and scored twice, but they finished 3-for-13 with runners in scoring position, left eight men on base and didn’t have a pitcher record a scoreless outing until infielder Ben Williamson threw a clean ninth with the game already well out of reach.
The defeat resulted in a four-game series split at Tropicana Field, with the Rays maintaining their four-game lead over the Yankees in the American League East. Tampa Bay has won six of the clubs’ nine meetings this season, so the Rays need to win just one of the four games they’ll play at Yankee Stadium in late September to claim the season series and a potentially important tiebreaker.
It wasn’t a bad outcome for the Rays, especially after they were shut down by Cam Schlittler in the series opener. They are guaranteed to reach the All-Star break with the AL’s best record. But Thursday’s finale did leave them with a sense that they’d missed an opportunity.
“We just came up a little bit short. Certainly, when you're playing four games against a team that you're neck and neck in the division with, you want to see if you can pick up a game,” manager Kevin Cash said. “But if you're not going to pick up one, you don't want to lose any.”
Rasmussen’s dominance has been so expected, so dependable, that it’s almost become routine. When Rasmussen takes the mound, you expect him to give the Rays a good chance to win. Especially against the Yankees.
Rasmussen entered Thursday’s game with a 13-inning scoreless streak against the Yankees and a 0.89 ERA in nine career games (eight starts) against the division rival. He got off to a good start, too, retiring each of the first six batters he faced.
And Junior Caminero gave Rasmussen a first-inning lead, blasting his 27th home run of the season to right-center field. The Statcast-projected 438-foot shot snapped Caminero’s 0-for-15 skid and gave him 12 homers in his last 16 games.
“Obviously the last couple games, I [didn't] feel really good at home plate,” Caminero said. “But it's just part of the game, you know, up and down, up and down. Today, it came back, my confidence at home plate.”
But it all unraveled for the Rays in the third inning. After a first-pitch, leadoff double by Max Schuemann, Ryan McMahon worked a 12-pitch at-bat -- with seven foul balls -- before pulling a line drive that landed on the right-field line for an RBI double.
“I thought I did a really good job of controlling the things I could control,” Rasmussen said. “Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever had an inning spiral like that.”
He retired Austin Wells for the first out of the inning, then the Yankees strung together five straight hits to take a 6-1 lead and chase Rasmussen. Trent Grisham singled, then Ben Rice lifted a homer just over the right-field fence.
There was some bad luck in there, too, as Jasson Domínguez and Cody Bellinger reached on consecutive infield singles. But that just showed how difficult the Yankees were to put away on this day, especially considering they struck out 45 times in the first three games of the series.
“It kind of snowballed from there a little bit where I felt like he was continuing to make good pitches, but you've got to give credit to the Yankee lineup,” Cash said. “They really spoiled some pitches, hung in there and then came up with some big hits.”