TAMPA -- Over the past week, the Rays made a habit of only putting together rallies that were too little and too late.
They only scored 14 runs during their recent five-game losing streak, and just two of them came within the first five innings. They needed to put more pressure on opposing starters to reduce the mounting tension on their scuffling lineup. After a frustrating loss on Tuesday, that felt even more important on Wednesday night.
¡°Sometimes when you lose a ballgame like we did last night,¡± manager Kevin Cash said, ¡°the best thing you can do is come out and score runs.¡±
Jos¨¦ Caballero delivered exactly what the Rays were looking for, lashing his first career grand slam in the first inning of Tampa Bay¡¯s 5-4 win over the Angels at George M. Steinbrenner Field.
¡°It's just the good feeling that we have here in the clubhouse. The team is happy to win, and the team wants to win,¡± Caballero said after the Rays¡¯ first victory since April 1. ¡°It's good to be back on the winning track.¡±
Curtis Mead singled off Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi with one out in the first, and Danny Jansen walked with two outs to load the bases. That brought up Caballero, starting in right field and batting sixth in Cash¡¯s all-right-handed batting order. He swung at the first pitch, a fastball up and away, and swatted it a Statcast-projected 327 feet to right field.
It was a sign of things to come, as all nine runs scored on the night came on opposite-field homers. It was the shortest grand slam in the Majors since Statcast began tracking batted balls in 2015, excluding inside-the-park homers, and only the Rays¡¯ fifth-ever grand slam in the first inning.
After only holding one lead -- for half an inning -- over the past week, they were ahead from the start.
¡°It's not like you sit back and relax, but it does give you confidence with our pitching staff that we feel really good about our chances when we get early leads and we're going to hold offenses down more times than that,¡± Cash said.
Reversing their recent trend, they couldn¡¯t muster much offense the rest of the night against Kikuchi and the Angels bullpen until Yandy D¨ªaz dropped his first home run of the season onto the short porch in right field in the seventh.
¡°There's never a question if he's going to hit. He's going to hit,¡± Cash said of D¨ªaz, who¡¯s batting just .174 with a .487 OPS to start the season. ¡°Happy for Yandy, and maybe that's a sign of things to come, that he's going to start getting his timing a little bit.¡±
According to Statcast, D¨ªaz¡¯s solo shot was also a Statcast-projected 327 feet. That made the Rays only the second club since at least 2015 to hit multiple homers shorter than 330 feet in the same game, joining the Orioles (J.J. Hardy, 314 and 328 feet) on April 12, 2016.
This is what they thought baseball would look like with the Yankee Stadium dimensions in play at Steinbrenner Field, right?
¡°Totally. First couple games we played here, we didn't see that,¡± Caballero said. ¡°But now, we see what we expected it to be.¡±
That worked for the Rays and, at times, against them. The Angels hit four opposite-field shots of their own, but they were all solo homers.
Three came off Ryan Pepiot, who survived a 30-pitch first and a 28-pitch second before making a few adjustments that improved his efficiency enough to get through five innings. And one came off hard-throwing lefty Mason Montgomery, who was on the wrong end of Kyren Paris¡¯ second homer of the night in the eighth.
¡°There's times when people hit balls and you're like, ¡®Dang, I know that one got got.¡¯ Some of them today didn't really 100 percent seem like that,¡± Pepiot said. ¡°We knew how it was going to play, and today it just played differently than it had the last homestand. And we just had to pitch to that, knowing that that's going to happen from time to time.¡±
The Rays will need to put more consistent pressure on their opponents if they want to truly break out offensively. But after the week they¡¯ve had, Caballero¡¯s early shot was just the jolt they needed.
¡°It's just like that huge exhale of relief,¡± said closer Pete Fairbanks, who picked up his second save with a scoreless ninth. ¡°We got a lead, and that's when we're at our best, right? When we can get our guys in the game and continue to attack the strike zone and throw everybody that we like to throw and protect that lead -- that¡¯s when we're at our best.¡±