ARLINGTON -- Globe Life Field remains a house of horrors for the Rays.
Tampa Bay saw its losing streak in the building extend to 10 games on Thursday night, falling 6-0 to the Rangers to start a four-game series. Tampa Bay has not won at Globe Life Field since June 2, 2022.
“Look, it’s just another MLB ballpark. It is what it is,” first baseman Jonathan Aranda said through an interpreter. “We haven’t gotten the results but, again, everybody plays here. It is what it is and we’re just going to keep focusing on ourselves and this team and flip the page and come back tomorrow and play another game.”
The latest setback can be attributed largely to Rangers starter Cal Quantrill and two relievers that shut out the Rays for the eighth time this season. The Rays matched a season-low with three hits on the night -- all singles -- as they were held without an extra-base hit for the second time this season. The only other time that happened was in a 1-0 loss to the Dodgers on June 16.
“I looked up three innings in and I think [Quantrill] had 30-something pitches,” manager Kevin Cash said. “We’ve got to have some better at-bats and put a little bit more pressure on him. But saying that, he pitched a heck of a ballgame and really didn't give us much choice but to swing because he was in the strike zone so much. We just couldn't do much with the stuff.”
The Rays’ best scoring opportunities came in the third and seventh innings. In the third, Nick Fortes and Yandy Díaz had consecutive two-out singles but Chandler Simpson grounded out to end the threat. In the seventh, Aranda drew a one-out walk and Cedric Mullins drew a two-out walk to put a runner in scoring position, but Quantrill got Jorge Mateo to fly out to end that threat.
“[Quantrill] was mixing it up well, spotting different pitches,” Simpson said. “He was just getting out of difficult situations and not allowing for us to get the big hits and get guys on base.”
Aranda offered a similar explanation when asked about Quantrill, who limited Tampa Bay to just a .100 average (4-for-40) in two games this season. Only four opposing pitchers have held the Rays to a batting average of .100 or lower with 12 1/3-plus innings pitched in a single season in Rays history.
“It's hard to pinpoint, to be quite honest. You know, he's just gotten the better of us,” Aranda said. “We've done our work, we've done our preparation, we've done the scouting, but just for whatever reason, he's been the better man on his outings.”
The Rays’ pitching didn’t fare much better.
Starter Shane McClanahan went five innings, allowing four runs on six hits with one walk and three strikeouts. He threw three scoreless before giving up a single run in the fourth and three in the fifth.
All of the runs in the fifth came with two outs. Rangers leadoff batter Ezequiel Duran drove in a run on a shallow fly ball to right that dropped in for a single, and then Corey Seager sent an 86.9 mph changeup a Statcast-projected 403 feet over the right-center-field wall.
“I felt like I made some good pitches. Unfortunately, it just didn't go my way,” McClanahan said. “I felt like I got a lot of weak contact, but it's baseball sometimes.”
As far as the Seager homer, McClanahan simply said: “Sometimes you’re going to get got, unfortunately.”
It marked the seventh straight start in which McClanahan wasn’t able to go six innings.
Regardless, the Rays are confident things will get turned around despite a 9-11 record the last 20 games. Before that, this is a team that went 18-4 from July 20 to Aug. 12.
Asked about the belief the club will bounce back, Simpson said: “Most definitely. Any stretch that we have that’s downward, I feel like we can get right back on track. Just continue to work.”
And, at some point it would seem, the Globe Life Field struggles will end. The franchise’s last losing streak of 10-plus at a single facility was 18 at Cleveland’s Progressive Field from Sept. 29, 2005 to July 23, 2010.
“There's good days, there's bad days,” Aranda said. “We're going to do whatever we can to just wash this day away and be ourselves moving forward. And that's baseball.”