2 losses to the A’s knock the Rays out of the top wild-card spot

TAMPA — The baseball gods giveth, and the freaking Athletics taketh away.

The six-week hot streak that had propelled the Rays to the top of the wild-card standings has been halted — at least temporarily — by back-to-back losses to the last-place A’s in the first two games of a fly-by homestand.

On Monday night, the Rays came storming back from an early deficit and then lost in the ninth when the Athletics scored a pair of runs. On Tuesday, they opted for an alternate storyline. The Rays blew an early lead, then came back to tie it before losing 4-3 in 10 innings.

When the week began, the Rays were 11-6 in games decided in the last at-bat, with five walk-off wins.

“There’s two tough ballgames,” said catcher Danny Jansen, who tied the score in the seventh with his ninth home run. “Looking to turn the page and get on the right track (Wednesday).”

If you want to be picky, that’s now four losses in the last five ballgames after a blistering 25-9 run that had taken the Rays from fourth place in the American League East to second.

What makes it even more annoying is the Rays had an opportunity the past two days to pass the reeling Yankees, who have also lost two in a row. Now, instead of being in first place, the Rays have slipped to third, a half-game behind Toronto in the division and second in the wild-card standings.

“We’re not capitalizing (on opportunities) as we’ve done lately the past few weeks,” said shortstop Taylor Walls. “Just try to scratch it up, come back tomorrow, try to put these past few games behind us.

“We’ve been playing good baseball, it’s just the past couple of days we haven’t come up with the key hit.”

That’s a fairly accurate description. The Rays went 3-for-6 with runners in scoring position on Monday night, but it wasn’t enough. They hit three homers on Tuesday night, but it wasn’t enough. Shane Baz gave Tampa Bay seven strong innings on Tuesday, but it wasn’t enough.

Baz, who threw eight shutout innings in his last start, tied a career high with 11 strikeouts and set a personal record with 20 swing-and-miss pitches.

“They were pretty aggressive with him but I thought he navigated that really well and gave us every chance through his seven innings of work,” said manager Kevin Cash. “He was really good for us.”

Essentially, Baz was done in by just a handful of pitches. After striking out five of the first 10 batters he faced he gave up a one-out double to Shea Langeliers in the fourth and, one out later, Max Muncy drilled a first-pitch fastball over the leftfield wall.

In the sixth, Langeliers hit a home run on a first-pitch cutter.

“The 0-0 pitch to (Muncy) definitely could have been a better pitch,” Baz said. “They’re really aggressive when guys get on base. That inning, they were swinging from 0-0, so I’ve got to tip my cap on that one.”

Some of the aggressive baserunning that has benefitted Tampa Bay during its climb up the standings ended up costing the Rays on Tuesday night. Jose Caballero, who leads the American League in stolen bases with 30, got picked off third base with one out in the second and then got caught trying to steal second on a close play after leading off the ninth with a single.

Just like Monday night, there were plenty of what-if moments for the Rays on Tuesday.

After Junior Caminero chased A’s starter Jeffrey Springs with a double to rightfield in the sixth, the Rays sent Jonathan Aranda up to pinch-hit for Christopher Morel, who had homered earlier in the game. Aranda blasted a 1-2 fastball from Justin Sterner 398 feet.

It was longer than Muncy’s homer, longer than Jansen’s homer, longer than Brandon Lowe’s third-inning homer.

Unfortunately, Aranda hit it to the deepest part of the park in dead center and Denzel Clarke caught it against the wall.

“It’s baseball,” Walls said. “At the end of the day, there’s 162 games. It gets pretty easy to turn it over and come in tomorrow knowing that you have to reset and you can’t let today affect you.

“But, yeah, if the wind is blowing out like a normal day (Aranda’s) ball is probably out. There’s plenty of different things that could have happened. Maybe (Caballero) is stealing second. If he’s there a split-second earlier, he’s safe, (Matt Thaiss) gets him over (to third) and we win the ballgame. So there’s plenty of things that (if) you roll the dice a different number comes up. But you can’t play the game that way.”

John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com. Follow @romano_tbtimes.

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