Rays pushed to brink by Dodgers
Baseball’s peculiar ironies never cease. Consider Game 5 of the World Series, when the most risk-averse franchise in major league history rolled the dice on the riskiest possible play in the sport.
To be certain, Manuel Margot’s attempted steal of home with the Tampa Bay Rays trailing the Los Angeles Dodgers by a run with two outs in the fourth inning was not ordered from on high. Nor was it suggested – or perhaps even conceptualized – by manager Kevin Cash.
Margot nearly pulled it off, dashing from third with Clayton Kershaw’s No. 22 jersey staring him in the face as the lefty brought his hands high in his unmistakable, exaggerated motion.
But almost won’t do, not in a game the Rays would eventually lose 4-2, not in a World Series they now trail 3-2, and not when they still had a chance to nudge Kershaw from the game early and test the Dodgers’ adventurous bullpen.
Yet, Margot’s ill-fated derring-do that ended with a mouthful of dirt and Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes slapping a tag near his chest neatly illustrated a couple of points.
One, that despite the power adjectives associated with the club – choose from “smart,” “efficient” or “sustainable” – the Rays are not robots.
Nor do they expect their players to act like one.
“We try to do things and make decisions and allow players to be athletic, be the athletes they are,” Cash said after Game 5. “If Manny felt he had a read on it, that’s not for me to say no. He’s trying to do something to pick his team up.
“We encourage making intelligent baseball decisions. If Manny felt he had a chance to make a play and get in there, we should support him.”
The Rays defended Margot up and down, from Cash to Kevin Kiermaier, who was at the plate and had a single earlier against Kershaw and homered against him in Game 1.
“It takes a lot of guts to sit here and try it in a World Series. It just didn’t work out for us,” says Kiermaier. “Manny is awesome; he should keep his head up from
this and that’s not the reason we didn’t win the ballgame tonight.”
That brings us to another point. The Rays were the best team in the AL this year – shortened regular season and expanded postseason both – and their 40 wins were second only to the Dodgers’ 43.
Yet the Dodgers’ ability to pressure opponents is legend; they’ve scored firstinning runs in the past three games, and their plate discipline has forced Rays starters Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Charlie Morton from the game before the sixth inning every night; Glasnow put the club in a 3-0 hole after two innings Sunday, though he steadied long enough to become the first Rays starter to complete five innings this series.
“It is a problem. There’s no denying there’s a problem,” Cash says of his
club’s early-game woes. “We have to correct it and we don’t have much time to correct that.
“We need to prevent runs.”
That kind of pressure can compel a team to try and make up the difference in other ways – like, say, a straight steal of home against a future Hall of Famer.
Mrgot found his way to third base with no outs, after drawing a walk, stealing second and advancing to third on an error. After Hunter Renfroe drew a walk, though, Joey Wendle popped out to shallow center field and Willy Adames struck out.
With Kiermaier facing a lefty-on-lefty situation, hey, what’s to lose?
“It was 100% my decision,” Margot said through an interpreter. “I thought it was a good decision at the time, thought I had a chance to be safe. From the first
pitch to KK, they weren’t paying any attention to me.”
But Kershaw was alerted to Margot’s dash just in time.
Now, a team with a perpetual bottomthird payroll, a franchise whose largest free-agent expenditure ever was $30 million to procure Morton’s services, is looking very much like an underdog again.
They have more than a puncher’s chance – in Game 6, Snell will oppose a phalanx of pitchers in an expected bullpen game for the Dodgers – but the odds are very much against them.
Hard to fault a guy for trying to beat them, then.
“I thought I was really close,” says Margot. “I didn’t really know where they touched me. We didn’t challenge it, but I thought I was close.”