ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — All eyes were on the mound Saturday with aces Dylan Cease starting for the Chicago White Sox and Shane McClanahan for the Tampa Bay Rays.
Cease, the 2022 American League Cy Young runner-up, battled into the fifth inning before exiting because of a high pitch count.
McClanahan, who was sixth in last year’s AL Cy Young voting, displayed a changeup that kept Sox batters off-balance throughout his six innings.
Neither factored in the decision, and for the second straight game the Rays walked off the Sox.
This time Randy Arozarena did in the Sox, driving in pinch runner Vidal Bruján with a single to right to give the Rays a 4-3 victory in 10 innings in front of 22,333 at Tropicana Field.
“We are playing hard, we are competing, we had a chance to win both games (in the series),” Sox manager Pedro Grifol said. “We’ve got a good team. I’m not going to question anything here. We prepare. We’ve just got to keep doing what we are doing. That’s it.”
The Sox fought back from deficits twice before losing for the eighth time in 10 games. At 7-14, they are seven games below .500 for the first time since concluding the 2019 season 72-89.
Gavin Sheets’ pinch-hit homer off Rays reliever Jason Adam tied the game at 3 in the eighth.
Sox reliever Reynaldo López bounced back from Friday, when he allowed three runs in the ninth in the 8-7 loss, with a perfect ninth Saturday to send the game to extras.
Arozarena came through for the Rays the next inning as the Sox suffered consecutive walk-off losses for the first time since Sept. 22-23, 2020, in Cleveland.
“We’ve fought really well, we’ve come back in both games and sometimes I just think that’s how baseball goes,” Cease said. “I’m proud of how we’ve played.”
Cease allowed three runs on six hits with five strikeouts and one walk in four-plus innings. He threw 101 pitches, leaving after allowing consecutive singles to begin the fifth.
“I was just falling behind a lot,” Cease said. “I wasn’t executing fastballs very well. I got into a groove with my slider a little bit later in the game, but really not having it that first inning cost me a ton of pitches. I adjusted decently, still need to be better.”
It was a busy beginning for Cease, who gave up a two-run homer to Arozarena during a 35-pitch first inning.
“They had some good at-bats against him and they ran up the pitch count,” Grifol said.
Eloy Jiménez homered in the second, his second in as many days, and Yasmani Grandal’s blast in the fifth tied the game.
McClanahan allowed the two runs on three hits with 10 strikeouts and one walk in six innings. He had 32 swings-and-misses, according to MLB Statcast.
“He’s got great stuff,” Grifol said.
The Rays regained the lead in the fifth on an Arozarena RBI single. Sheets, hitting for Romy Gonzalez in the eighth, connected for his second homer of the season to tie the game again.
“Just was able to get on top of it and did some damage,” Sheets said. “I’m not trying to do too much in that situation, just going against a tough guy and trying to put a good at-bat together.”
That turned out to be the team’s final hit. The Sox went down in order in the 10th with automatic runner Oscar Colás stranded at second.
They had a tough decision to make in the bottom of the 10th with a runner on second and one out. The Sox elected to intentionally walk Wander Franco and face Arozarena.
“We liked the (Jimmy) Lambert-Arozarena matchup,” Grifol said.
Arozarena singled to right and Bruján, the automatic runner, scored just ahead of Adam Haseley’s throw as the Rays improved to 12-0 at home and 18-3 overall. The Sox, meanwhile, suffered another series loss (0-6-1) regardless of Sunday’s finale.
“We’re doing a lot of really good things this series,” Sheets said. “It just hasn’t gone our way.”
Before the game, the Rays honored longtime radio announcer Dave Wills, who died March 5 at 58. Wills, an Oak Lawn native, was the team’s radio play-by-play voice from 2005-22 after working on the Sox radio network for 11 seasons as a pregame and postgame host. During the tribute, the Rays read a letter from Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.
