Tampa Bay Rays Open Long Road Trip With Disheartening 5-1 Loss to Angels

It also spoiled the Rays debut of starting pitcher Adrian Houser, who was traded from the Chicago White Sox at the trade deadline last Thursday. He had been great for them, going 6-2 with a 2.10 ERA in 11 starts.

But he was scratched from his last start before the deadline and hadn't pitched for 10 days before Monday. He wasn't sharp, struggling with command and execution, andgave up a season-high five runs and 11 hits in 5 2/3 innings. Houser took the loss, his first since June 15.

It was disappointing for him.

“I really wasn’t synched up. I was excited to get out there. It had been about a week and a half since I’d been out there, so I was ready to get out there,'' Houser told reporters after the game,

"I was just moving a little too quick and rushing down the mound and wasn’t able to get the back side synched up. So I was spraying stuff all over the place and wasn’t hitting spots when I needed to.”

Houser gave up a two-run homer to Angels right fielder Jo Adell in the second inning and then allowed two more runs in the third, where he hit a batter and then gave up a double to Mike Trout and two more singles before recording an out. Taylor Ward, who had three hits on the night, had a two-RBI single in the inning.

They added the fifth run in the sixth on a Zach Neto double with two outs that ended Houser's night.

“It’s been a unique couple of days for him, no doubt,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said told reporters. “Fly out on the West Coast, come in and make a start with a bunch of new faces that you don’t know. But I thought he competed really well. Appreciate how he got so deep in the ballgame, given where the pitch count was trending.”

The Rays did a good job of driving up Yusei Kikuchi's pitch count early. He walked two batters in the third, and after a wild pitch, the Rays had runners on second and third. But Christopher Morel and Jonny DeLuca both struck out to end the threat. Kikuchi threw 71 pitches in the first three innings.

“We were probably one swing of the bat in our favor of maybe getting Kikuchi out of the game during the third,” Cash said of Kikuchi, who threw 21 pitches in the first inning and 34 in the third. “I think DeLuca was the guy with guys on base, they had the bullpen going. But we didn’t capitalize.

“He settled in, got deep and we just had too many pitches missed in the zone. You go back, there’s too many pitches, too many foul balls, hittable pitches that we could have done a little bit more damage with that we just didn’t have an answer for. Kikuchi did a nice job.”

The Rays are 38-23 against the Angels since 2016 and had won the season series for eight straight years. That won't happen now, since the Angels won two of three in Tampa in April. This series was supposed to be played in Tampa Bay, but they were flipped on the schedule to avoid summer heat and rain in Florida.

The two teams will play again on Tuesday night, with a 9:38 p.m. ET start. Ryan Pepiot (6-9, 3.80 ERA) will get the start for Tampa Bay. Jose Soriano (7-8, 3.65 ERA) gets the call for the Angels. They'll conclude the series with a day game on Wednesday.

With Monday's win, the 55-58 Angels actually moved ahead of the Rays in the wild-card standings too. Seattle — Tampa Bay's foe this weekend — holds the third wild-card spot and the Rays are 5.5 games behind them.

To make matters worse, there are now four other teams — Texas, Cleveland, Kansas City and the Angels who are between them and the Mariners.