TAMPA -- Zack Littell had it all going Sunday afternoon.
The Rays starter’s pitches were moving the way he wanted. He was throwing them where he wanted. He struck out the side in the first inning for only the second time in his career. He struck out five and put together his fourth straight outing without a walk.
Then, after five innings and 69 pitches, with the Rays and Tigers tied, Littell was done.
With key relievers rested and Monday’s off-day looming, manager Kevin Cash turned to his bullpen to cover the final four innings. The strategy worked brilliantly in the sixth inning, but the Tigers pulled ahead in the seventh and pulled away in a rain-soaked ninth to hand the Rays a 9-3 loss at George M. Steinbrenner Field.
“I understand. That's the way this team's built,” Littell said afterward. “I'm not going to lie [and] say I wasn't frustrated, and Cash acknowledged that. He knows that we want to be out there.
“But at the end of the day, this is the way that the team is built, and it's going to give us the best chance to win. I think the bulk of the time, that's going to pay off. Today, it obviously didn't.”
It was a frustrating finish to another series victory for the Rays, who fell 2 1/2 games behind the Yankees in the American League East standings but have still won 22 of their past 31 games.
“It would have been nice to get a sweep, but you kind of have to lean on what we've done and [that we are] playing some really good ball and just keep it going,” lefty reliever Garrett Cleavinger said.
The Rays had every reason to be pleased with Littell’s outing. He recorded a season-high 15 swinging strikes despite throwing a season-low 69 pitches. The Tigers whiffed on half of their 16 swings against his splitter, which the relentless strike-thrower consistently buried below the strike zone. He faced 19 batters and didn’t throw a single pitch in a three-ball count.
The lone run Detroit scored against him came in the second inning, when Riley Greene hit a leadoff double and scored on a two-out single by Dillon Dingler.
“Kind of felt like the culmination of all the stuff that I've kind of been trying to improve on,” Littell said. “Kind of came together today, so definitely want to build on that one.”
But with the heart of Detroit’s lineup coming up for a third time in the sixth inning, Cash replaced Littell with Cleavinger. Littell admitted he was surprised, but he understood why Cash summoned a fresh arm to face Gleyber Torres, Kerry Carpenter and the dangerous Greene.
“Just given the off-day, the matchup, them turning the lineup back over with Carpenter and Greene -- those guys are really good,” Cash said. “I thought Lit gave us every opportunity and felt like, where our bullpen was, that we could try to shorten the game a little bit.”
Cleavinger capably handled the assignment with a clean sixth. When he entered the dugout, he said he was told, “Stay locked in.” But he issued a leadoff walk to Spencer Torkelson in the seventh, then surrendered a two-run homer to Wenceel Pérez on an 0-2 fastball up in the zone.
Cash said that was the matchup they were hoping for, with the switch-hitting Pérez forced to bat right-handed, but Cleavinger lamented the location of his two-strike pitch.
“I mean, 0-2, you never want to throw anything too close to the zone,” he said. “You've got to expand a little bit, and I just didn't get it up high enough.”
Meanwhile, during the first eight innings, the Rays managed just one run, on Junior Caminero’s homer to left field off Casey Mize.
The blast gave Caminero 19 homers and 50 RBIs less than halfway through the season. He’s the 10th player aged 21 or younger to put up those numbers before the All-Star break. The others? Mel Ott, Eddie Mathews, Al Kaline, José Canseco, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Cody Bellinger, Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuña Jr.
“I feel good,” Caminero said through interpreter Eddie Rodriguez. “I've been working very hard, and I feel good at home plate.”
The game got away from the Rays in the ninth, when heavy rain came before six runs. Before the downpour finally forced an 18-minute delay, reliever Forrest Whitley allowed hits to all six batters he faced: back-to-back doubles, two singles, a Parker Meadows homer and finally, a Javier Báez triple.
“I think I was just trying to get the cutter to the inner half on the lefties, and it was just kind of creeping over the plate,” Whitley said. “Whether it was grip, the mound, whatever -- it doesn't matter. It just wasn't executed.”