Zach Eflin, Rays fall short against Orioles
BALTIMORE — Something was missing for Rays starter Zach Eflin on Tuesday.
He didn’t have the same dominant stuff from his previous outing, striking out only four to match his season-low for a game. He allowed three runs in a messy third inning, and a season-high four overall through six. And for just the third time this season, he walked a batter.
His Rays mates were a step off as well, failing to come up with a single hit with a runner in scoring position and hitting into four double plays in a 4-2 loss to the Orioles. The Rays’ majors-best record dropped to 29-8; the Orioles improved to 23-13.
“I felt pretty decent, felt like the ball was coming out pretty good early on in the game,” Eflin said.
“The first couple innings, I felt really good, felt like everything was working. And then a couple cutters kind of got away from me. They made some good swings on some bad pitches, which is what big-leaguers do, and at the end of the day, I didn’t quite do my job right enough.”
Eflin pitched without the rubber wedding band on his left hand under his glove, deciding after getting word from Major League Baseball that the umpires were going to make him take it off in enforcement of the rule banning jewelry on pitchers’ hands.
He said Monday he planned to wear it despite being forced to take it off or be ejected from his last start, noting he had worn it for two-plus years with no issue and that it was important to him and “my representation of the covenant I have with my wife.” He instead wore the ring on his neck chain.
“I was notified before the game that they were going to ask me to take it off, and I didn’t want to put the umpires in a position to be the bad guy,” Eflin said. “So I just took it off. It’s whatever. It’s over and done with, and I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.”
The Rays had a 1-0 lead from the start, on Wander Franco’s seventh homer of the season, but the game turned in the third.
Gunnar Henderson laced a cutter to right-center that turned into a triple as Manuel Margot made a running and leaping dive for the ball but missed, then scored on a ground out. “He covered a lot of ground,” manager Kevin Cash said. “That would have been one impressive catch.”
With two outs, Cedric Mullins doubled and Adley Rutschman, leader of the Orioles’ group of young position players, crushed another errant cutter for a two-run home run that sailed over the right field fence and landed on Eutaw Street. The 407-foot blast left his bat at 111.1 mph.
“It was kind of like the third inning on, the cutter, it didn’t feel like it was cutting in my eyes,” Eflin said. “But at the end of the day, flush it down the toilet, move on. Had some really good defensive plays tonight, a lot of things to look back on and be positive about, but on to the next.”
Cash offered a much more positive assessment of the first of Eflin’s six starts that the Rays have lost.
“I think Baltimore made a couple adjustments (after the first time through the order), but I really thought Zach threw the ball really well,” Cash said.
“He was really efficient (80 pitches). Had some traffic out there. We talked about it coming in — this is a good hitting team. They showed that. And Zach’s a really good pitcher that knows how to navigate through a little bit of traffic. You take away the home run from Adley, and I think that’s the one pitch that maybe he’d like to have back.’'
The other issue for the Rays was an inability to do much against rookie Grayson Rodriguez and some of the power arms in the O’s pen, as their only other run came on a Taylor Walls homer (his sixth) in the fifth. Though they had runners on base in each of the nine innings, they didn’t get any of them home, going 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and leaving nine on.
The Rays hit into four double plays overall (their most in more than six years) with Yandy Diaz responsible for three.
“We had opportunities ... the hit just wasn’t there when we needed it,” Walls said.
“We had the situations to do it. We just couldn’t find that extra hit with two outs, guys on. That’s all we can do is just try to put ourselves in opportunities for that to happen. And have the right approach to be able to do it when we come to the plate and have that opportunity. So hopefully (Wednesday) we get those same opportunities and we can capitalize.’'
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