Rays hold off 9th-inning rally to hand Pirates 4th consecutive loss, sweep series

Not much was going right for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the best team in baseball.

They lost starting pitcher Vince Velasquez to right elbow discomfort. They surrendered three solo home runs. And the home-plate umpire had an expanded strike zone.

In the ninth inning, the Pirates finally caught some breaks against the Tampa Bay Rays.

Tucupita Marcano was hit by a pitch. Bryan Reynolds reached on an error when Marcano collided with second baseman Taylor Walls and the ball popped loose. Carlos Santana delivered a two-out, two-run double, and Jack Suwinski walked to put the winning run on base.

The Pirates went down swinging when Jason Adam struck out Connor Joe, as the Rays survived the rally for a 3-2 win to clinch a three-game series sweep Thursday afternoon at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla.

It marked the fourth consecutive loss for the Pirates (20-12), who remain atop the Central Division but fell behind the Atlanta Braves (21-10) for the best record in the NL.

“We kept battling,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said on the AT&T SportsNet postgame show. “We were down 3-0 against the best team in baseball, and we get the winning run on base. Our guys kept going. There was a lot of good pitching in (Thursday’s) game.”

The AL-leading Rays (26-6) got a gem from starter Zach Eflin, who was ruthlessly efficient in getting through seven innings on 80 pitches (59 strikes) with seven of his 10 strikeouts coming on called third strikes.

Shelton was asked if he thought the expanded strike zone was retribution for his getting ejected from Wednesday’s 8-1 loss after a heated argument with umpires about the pitch clock.

“I would hope not,” Shelton said. “That’s not how it should go. You should call the game how it should be. I know our hitters had a lot of questions about pitches.”

The Pirates, meantime, lost Velasquez. The right-hander was removed from the game after the third inning because of right elbow discomfort. Afterward, Velasquez said he was “optimistic” that it wasn’t as severe of an injury as it could have been if he kept pitching.

Velasquez had thrown 18 consecutive scoreless innings coming into the game, and he stretched that streak to 19 after putting two runners on base in the first inning. Yandy Diaz hit a leadoff double, and Wander Franco drew a full-count walk, but Velasquez got Randy Arozarena to ground into a 6-4-3 double play and struck out Josh Lowe.

Walls ended that streak in the second, sending a 2-2 slider 380 feet to right for his fifth home run and a 1-0 Rays lead. Velasquez clutched his right forearm in the third, when he retired the side but told Shelton he couldn’t continue.

Rookie lefty reliever Jose Hernandez immediately started warming up in the bullpen and replaced Velasquez. Arozarena started the fourth by driving Hernandez’s fifth pitch, a 2-2 slider, 384 feet to right for his eighth homer and a 2-0 Rays lead. Duane Underwood Jr. followed with a pair of scoreless innings as the Pirates kept the game close.

Eflin (4-0) allowed only three hits without a walk, and the Pirates didn’t have a runner reach second base until Carlos Santana’s two-out double to the right-field corner in the seventh inning. Eflin answered by striking out Suwinski to end the scoring chance.

“We just didn’t play our kind of baseball,” Reynolds said. “We didn’t have timely hitting, didn’t get runners on so we couldn’t utilize our speed and all that. It’s something to grow from.

“I don’t think there’s any panic going on. It’s just kind of how baseball goes, the ebbs and flows of it. We’ve got to get back to our baseball, work the counts, get on base, steal, timely hitting, that kind of stuff.”

Pirates righty reliever Colin Holderman pitched an immaculate inning in the bottom of the seventh, throwing all nine of his pitches for strikes to get Walls looking and both Luke Raley and Christian Bethancourt swinging. It was the first immaculate inning by a Pirates pitcher since Juan Nicasio threw one in the eighth inning at St. Louis on July 4, 2016, and the fourth in franchise history.

Diaz added an opposite-field shot to right off Robert Stephenson in the eighth to increase the Rays’ lead to 3-0, but the Pirates found their footing in the final frame.

Marcano was hit by a pitch while attempting a bunt. When Reynolds grounded to second base, Marcano knocked the ball loose from Walls as they collided on the basepath. After Andrew McCutchen struck out, Santana hit a two-run double to right. Suwinski drew a full-count walk to put the winning run on base, but Adam struck out Joe to earn his second save.

The Pirates return to PNC Park for a six-game homestand starting Friday night against the Toronto Blue Jays (18-13), who had lost four straight entering Thursday night’s game at Boston.

“We ran into the best team in baseball that’s playing really good right now,” Shelton said of the Rays. “We gave up, what, three solo homers? We contained things. We played well. We’ve just got to flush this away and start playing good baseball (Friday) against Toronto.

“The one thing is, is they’re built really well. Obviously that’s why they’re 25-6 or whatever they are. And they execute. That’s the thing, if you’re a young team, you have to realize: We have to execute. We ran into a situation late in the game that we got them to make an error, forced them into an error with ‘Tuca’ getting to second there. Jack has a hell of an at-bat and we put the winning run on base. We just didn’t get the big hit at the end.”