Starters went from best to bust, but Rays know they’ll straighten out

MIAMI - The Rays are hoping Drew Rasmussen’s dominant outing against the Marlins on Friday night was the start of something.

Or, more accurately, the re-start.

As the Rays roared through a fantastic four-week 22-4 run that rocketed them to the best record in the major leagues, their pitching was a huge part of their success.

The overall ERA for that stretch from April 22-May 23 was 2.37, and the starters had a big hand in it, going 12-2 with a 1.93 ERA that was best in the majors by a large margin.

Then over the next 10-game stretch, in which the Rays lost eight times, they looked like the gang that couldn’t throw straight.

Their overall ERA for those games was 6.38 (fourth worst in the majors), and their starters were the major part of the problem, going 2-6 with a 6.70 ERA that was third highest.

“Probably a little bit of regression to the mean to some degree,” Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder said Friday afternoon. “But I think also there’s things that we’re in control of that we’ve not done quite as good a job of over the last two weeks.”

While not seemingly major issues, they are important.

One example was Rasmussen, who over his previous three starts lamented his inability to throw Strike 1 soon enough (just 57.6% on first pitches), putting himself behind and the Rays in trouble too often.

Friday, after suggesting catcher Nick Fortes keep the target in “the big part” of the plate rather than work the edges, Rasmussen was very much in the zone from the start, posting a first-pitch strike at an impressive 77% rate (17 of 22).

Similarly, the Rays preach count control, especially getting to two strikes as quickly as possible, and allowing contact, albeit preferably soft, early in at-bats.

“They’re things that just really come back to the things that we adhere to that are very process-driven that have yielded the results over time,” Snyder said.

“Then there’s some randomness in hitting in terms of when guys get hot and when they don’t. You play a (Tigers) team that had five wins in May, but they get (Gleyber) Torres and (Kerry) Carpenter back. We had the fewest ground balls (allowed) in a series all year against the team that hits the ball in the air and has pretty good impact, as we didn’t make pitches that we needed to make in certain situations.

“So I think that things are very correctable, and they’re very much within our control. It’s just a matter of continuing to harp on them.”

As much time and effort that Snyder invests in trying to put pitchers in position to help the Rays win, he also said getting knocked around, and down, a couple times wasn’t necessarily the worst experience.

“It’s not a bad thing to see what the canvas tastes like here and there,” Snyder said. “It’s actually a good thing. There’s more to learn from the days that you have to actually get up after tasting the canvas and realize, all right, maybe there’s some things that I’ve got to adjust to. So trust these guys will be just fine.”

Veteran reliever Garrett Cleavinger took the boxing analogy even further.

“That’s just kind of how baseball goes sometimes,” he said. “You’re going to run into days where you kind of get punched in the mouth a little bit.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that. We’ll all learn from it and come back, and we’re not going to change what we do overnight because of a weird series or a weird week. We’ve had a pretty good process that’s led us to this point, and we’ll stick with it. But, yeah, just baseball can be kind of weird sometimes.”

Though the starters have the uglier numbers and have taken much of the blame for the Rays’ 2-8 streak, there were only a handful of bad outings - two by Steven Matz (11 earned runs over 4 2/3 innings), one each by Griffin Jax (six earned runs over four, and an abbreviated outing when he was struck by a line drive) and Nick Martinez (also six over four) - which provided hope the issue could be contained.

Some inconsistency was expected with Jax, as he makes the challenging in-season transition from reliever to starter. Martinez hadn’t allowed more than two runs in any of his first 11 starts, so his last outing is viewed as an isolated incident.

With Rasmussen rebounding, and Shane McClanahan rolling into Saturday’s start on what has thus far been a remarkable return to the rotation after not pitching since August 2023 due to arm injuries, Matz seemed to be the primary concern.

And the Rays addressed that Saturday, moving Matz to the bullpen “for the foreseeable future” but not permanently, manager Kevin Cash said. Mason Englert is expected to handle bulk innings when Matz’s turn next comes up Monday, though likely behind an opener.

Matz, 35, hadn’t pitched regularly as a starter since 2021, so the Rays had to know their would be some bumps, though his solid opening month-plus, going 4-1 with a 3.86 ERA, raised expectations.

Since a two-week injured list stint to address minor elbow inflammation, Matz is 0-2 with a 12.46 ERA, allowing 16 hits and four walks over 8 2/3 innings.

Also of note, his velocity has dropped a few ticks.

Cash said idea of the moving Matz is to “freshen him up a little bit” with shorter relief stints.

Snyder feels confident Matz can get turned around.

There are going to be other issues ahead.

Workloads will need to be monitored, given McClanahan and Rasmussen’s injury histories, Jax’s transition and Martinez returning to a full-time rotation role.

And depth is a concern, with Ryan Pepiot lost for the season due to hip surgery, Joe Boyle seemingly lost on the mound (9.60 ERA over six Triple-A outings with 33 baserunners allowed in 15 innings), and Jesse Scholtens sidelined with a wrist issue. Adding a starter via trade seems a reasonable option.

And, with more than 100 games to play, there’s likely to be another rough stretch or two coming.

“It’s baseball. It’s going to happen, we’re not going to go out there and put up a zero or one every single time,” McClanahan said. “You’ve got to understand that in this game, you are going to fail. And once you eliminate that worry and kind of fear, I feel like you can achieve more.

“I think this team does a really good job of just competing with what they have, and understanding who they are, and whatever it is that day it is. … So I don’t think anybody in here really is truly concerned about what’s happened. We’ve played really good baseball, and there’s times you’re going to look like you never stepped on a baseball field before. So that’s just the beauty of it. And we’re going to continue to work each day.”

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