Rays Waste Great Rasmussen Start, Blow Late Lead in 5-4 Loss to Atlanta

Drew Rasmussen had another great start, pitching five scoreless innings, but the Rays bullpen gave up four home runs in a 5-4 loss to the Atlanta Braves on Saturday. Rasmussen has allowed just one earned runs in 15 innings of work thus far.

Tampa Bay's Drew Rasmussen (57) throws a pitch against the Atlanta Braves on Saturday. He pitched five scoreless innings. | Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images

TAMPA, Fla. — Saturday's game with the Atlanta Braves started with such promise for the Tampa Bay Rays, but it ended ugly. Some recent disastrous trends continued to get in their way in the 5-4 loss that dropped them to 6-8 on the season.

Drew Rasmussen was terrific in his third straight start, pitching five scoreless innings and allowing just four hits with a walk and a season-high seven strikeouts. The 29-year-old right-hander, who has given up just one run in 15 innings, left with a 2-0 lead.

But then everything went sideways from there, and we've seen this already too many times this season.

It started in the bottom of the sixth. The Rays, still leading 2-0, opened the inning with the two walks and an infield single. Bases loaded and no one out, with a great opportunity to blow the game open. Instead, Instead, Jose Caballero struck out, Taylor Walls bunted into an out and Ben Rortvedt grounded out to end the threat.

It was reminiscent of last Tuesday's one-run loss to the Los Angeles Angels, where the Rays had a runner on third with none out in the seventh, eighth and nine innings — and failed to score all three times. That hadn't been done EVER in the past 100-plus years.

Then the Braves started thumping. They hit four solo home runs — two from Sean Murphy, one in the seventh and another in the eighth to tie the game 3-3. Then in the ninth, Michael Harris II hit a two-run homer off of Cole Sulser — who had just been called up Friday when reliever Kevin Kelly went on the injured list — to put the Braves up 5-3.

Jonathan Aranda homered in the bottom of the inning for the Rays, but it was too little, too late.

Rays pitching has given up 16 home runs in the past four games at Steinbrenner Field. Manuel Rodriguez gave up the first one Saturday, Hunter Bigge gave up two in the eighth and Sulser allowed the ninth-inning homer.

“Any time the starter leaves the game with a lead and you don't win the game, we're going to feel bad as a bullpen,” Bigge said. “We expect to win those types of games.”

It actually was a fairly rare event. It's the first time since June 22, 2023 that the Rays blew a lead of two runs or more after the eighth inning.

The two teams meet again on Sunday at 1:40 p.m. ET. Former Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale starts for the Braves and the Rays have called up rookie Joe Boyle to start, the team said Sunday morning. Shane Baz, who's been terrific in his first two games, was supposed to start, but the Rays have decied to push everyone in the rotation back a day with no days off until Apri 21.