ST. LOUIS -- Sitting in the visitors’ dugout at Busch Stadium on Wednesday afternoon, watching the Rays work out ahead of their Opening Day matchup with the Cardinals, president of baseball operations Erik Neander acknowledged the preseason projections and prognostications that give Tampa Bay little to no chance to compete in a loaded American League East.
He just didn’t necessarily agree with them.
“Our internal expectations are more optimistic than the public, certainly,” Neander said. “Even with respect to our expectations, I kind of work through our roster, and I see more reasons to think we could exceed those internal expectations than fall short.”
If that’s going to be the case this year, if the Rays are going to avoid another season that ends in September, they can’t afford to have many games like their 9-7 loss to the Cardinals before a sold-out crowd at Busch Stadium on Thursday afternoon.
Odds are, they won’t. Because how often are they going to blow a six-run lead in one inning, in part because they had such a big offensive half-inning that they knocked their own starter out of the game?
That’s what happened during the 29th season opener in franchise history. The game was tied 1-1 after five innings thanks to a strong start by right-hander Drew Rasmussen and the club’s first home run of the season off the bat of Jonathan Aranda, then the Rays exploded for six runs in the top of the sixth inning.
It was, in a way, the perfect representation of what they hope this year’s lineup can be.
The Rays kept the line moving. They hit some balls hard and found holes with others. They didn’t strike out. They got contributions from up and down the lineup and, in the case of Chandler Simpson’s go-ahead pinch-hit single, off the bench.
“I think we performed exactly how our offense is designed to perform,” said catcher Nick Fortes, who bookended the rally with a pair of singles. “You stack days like that over the course of 162, I think we're going to be happy with where we're going to be at the end of it.”
But as the inning dragged on and the Cardinals made two pitching changes, the Rays didn’t feel comfortable sending Rasmussen back to the mound after such a long break. Plus, they felt comfortable handing such a sizable lead to their bullpen.
That was all going through Rasmussen’s head as he watched the inning unfold, simultaneously thrilled and aware his first career Opening Day start was coming to an end.
“If they had stopped at three, I would have been back out there for the sixth,” Rasmussen said. “I mean, if we're going to score seven consistently, we're going to win a lot of games this year.”
This time, though, the Rays’ lead disappeared quickly.
Left-hander Ian Seymour gave up five straight hits and exited without recording an out, as the Cardinals narrowed the deficit to two runs. High-leverage lefty Garrett Cleavinger gave up two hits and a sacrifice fly, making it a one-run game. Then right-hander Griffin Jax allowed a game-tying sacrifice fly before surrendering a tiebreaking two-run homer to Alec Burleson.
“Everybody that came in just got to two strikes and then couldn't find those pitches to get them to chase, expand or put them away, for whatever reason,” manager Kevin Cash said. “Give the Cardinals a ton of credit. They had a bunch of big at-bats.”
Indeed, four of the five hits Seymour allowed came with two strikes, and the other came on the first pitch of the at-bat.
“Honestly, it was just more where I was throwing the pitches with two strikes. It's just got to be way better,” Seymour said. “Kind of ruined a good day.”
Same story for Cleavinger: one two-strike hit, then a first-pitch bunt. It was no different for Jax, who gave up a sacrifice fly on an 0-2 count then the homer on a 1-2 fastball that clocked in at 98.6 mph but wasn’t as elevated as he hoped.
“It was a good approach by those guys. They weren't really chasing out of the zone,” Jax said. “They were making you come back in [the zone], and they were putting some good swings on the ball.”
It was a rough inning for the Rays’ reimagined bullpen, which is taking a mix-and-match, leverage-by-committee approach after the club parted ways with closer Pete Fairbanks over the offseason. But it did not diminish their confidence in the group, nor their belief that they can be better than expected this season.
“I'm not gonna put too much stock into [it]. We're gonna win a lot of ballgames,” Cash said. “We get up 7-1, we like our chances a lot. It just didn't go our way today.”