Detroit – This series picked up right where it left off back in St. Petersburg in the first weekend of the season, with Tampa Bay rag-dolling the Tigers.
The Rays, who won the three-game set in April by a combined score of 21-3, barely broke a sweat Friday night, beating the Tigers 8-0 at Comerica Park. The Rays have won five of their last six games. The Tigers are going in the opposite direction, having lost seven of their last nine.
They are 13 games under .500 (48-61) for the first time this season.
“Those first three games of the year were tough,” said Matt Vierling, who collected one of the Tigers’ three hits. “The beginning of the year, you want to get off to a good start and that hit us hard. And then they got hot. This one kind of coincides with that.
“We just need to get back here tomorrow and get off on the right foot. Get started early. I feel like the start is big against this team so we don’t let them get rolling.”
This one, for all intents and purposes, was over early. Like after two innings. The Rays scored four runs in a six-batter span off rookie right-hander Reese Olson. And you will notice a pattern in the barrage.
After getting the first two outs in five pitches to start the game, Olson gave up a two-strike single to Brandon Lowe and walked Randy Arozarena after he was ahead in the count 1-2. Both scored after former Tiger Isaac Paredes lashed a hanging slider for a double.
In the second inning, Olson got two strikes on the first two hitters and lost them both – a single by Harold Ramirez and a bullet two-run homer to left by Jose Siri. It was Siri’s 21st home run.
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“I thought (Olson) made bad pitches with two strikes,” manager AJ Hinch said. “That was the tough part. Both he and (reliever Trey) Wingenter gave up a lot of hits with two strikes. Yeah, credit to them for good at-bats. But our execution in those counts could have been better.
“That was the big difference in the damage.”
Olson needed 46 pitches to get through those two innings. He managed to soldier through five with no further damage, but the hole was already way too deep.
“Their approach was to sit on my slider, which makes sense the way I’ve used it (33% of the time),” Olson said. “That was definitely their plan. Once I realized that after the second inning, I went to more curveballs and changeups and pitched three scoreless innings relatively easily.”
The slider has been problematic for Olson in his last two starts. The pitch characteristics are still good, 3,000-rpm spin rate, but he’s leaving too many over the heart of the plate.
“Execution is the key,” Hinch said. “If you saw some of the funny swings they had, that’s the same slider that when it’s middle-middle gets hit. If not as simplified as that all the time, but generally speaking, guys at this level don’t miss mistakes, especially good teams.
“The adjustment is to fine-tune the execution. You have to execute from the very beginning of the at-bat. They will punish balls in the middle and that seemed to be the problem today.”
Olson used the Siri homer to illustrate how they were sitting on his slider.
“He was off on all the heaters,” he said. “And I threw him a slider in the zone trying to get contact. I didn’t want to go 3-2. And he was sitting on it.”
Hinch’s argument is, even if Siri wasn’t sitting on it, he’d have a good chance of hitting a center-cut slider.
“Maybe early in the game show something else with two strikes,” Olson said. “Maybe don’t lean on the slider so heavy.”
The Tigers never gained any traction against right-hander Zack Littell, who had the Tigers beating balls into the dirt for six innings. Which is a bad plan, especially when you are hitting them to the left side of the Rays’ defense. Shortstop Wander Franco and Paredes were picking everything hit in their vicinity. The Tigers had 10 ground ball outs, all to the left side of the infield − five at Franco, five others to Paredes at third base.
“He threw a ton of strikes and came right at you,” Hinch said. “But we couldn’t get the ball off the ground. Most of our outs were on the ground and that continued no matter what pitcher came in. They controlled contact and that made their defense have to make plays and they did.”
They Tigers got one runner into scoring position off Littell. Miguel Cabrera did that all by himself, lining a double off the wall in right-center field. His career hit total stands at 3,139, two behind Tony Gwynn for 20th all-time.
The crowd, announced of 26,050, gave Cabrera a standing ovation but it was about all the folks had to cheer about. The Tigers ended up with three hits total and 15 ground ball outs. And the Rays just kept banging out hits.
Siri ended up with three RBI and two hits. Paredes, who has 21 homers this season, had a pair of hits. Ramirez had three hits and an RBI.
Tigers infielder Zack Short pitched a scoreless ninth. He’s allowed one run in four innings this season. The diehards who stayed to the end could cheer that, too.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky