This is how the Rays' Saturday in Miami started:
Word that Ryan Yarbrough was their 11th pitcher to be sidelined by injury, that starting catcher Mike Zunino was joining him on the 10-day injured list, and that veteran reliever Chaz Roe wouldn't be returning as hoped from an elbow injury.
This is how their Saturday in Miami ended:
With a 4-0 win over the Marlins, fueled by a second straight stellar outing from rookie starter Josh Fleming and a couple of clutch hits, and a 23-11 record and a four-game lead over the Yankees in the American League East despite all the injuries.
Fleming, who made an impressive debut last Sunday with five solid innings against the Blue Jays, was even better against the Marlins, taking a shutout into the sixth. The crafty lefty allowed only three hits over 5 1/3 innings, had no walks and struck out six, throwing 74 pitches. Ryan Thompson, Edgar Garcia, Aaron Loup and John Curtiss finished it up as the Rays logged a second straight shutout.
Like Friday, the game started with an impressive, and quick-paced, pitching duel, the first 4 { innings played in 62 minutes.
The Rays were shut out through the first five innings by Pablo Lopez, then broke through for a run in the sixth. Catcher Michael Perez, who will get more playing time with Zunino out, singled, went to third on Austin Meadows' double and scored on Yandy Diaz's infield bouncer.
They made it 2-0 in the seventh when Joey Wendle doubled and scored on a two-out single by Kevin Kiermaier. And they doubled the margin with two more in the eighth, loading the bases with a two-out Diaz single and two walks, then getting a ground-rule double from Wendle.
As staggering as it was for the Rays to lose another pitcher to injury, there was some optimism that Yarbrough was sidelined with a sore groin as opposed to an arm injury and that he could make a quick return, missing only one start.
They are also hopeful that Zunino won't be out long due to a left oblique strain, though not as certain given the tricky nature of those injuries. The Rays did applaud him for being proactive in reporting the slight discomfort so the athletic training staff could mitigate him making it worse.
The news about Roe was clearly disappointing. He had progressed to the point that there was an expectation he could return on the next homestand rather than 2021.
The toll of all the injuries is obviously concerning, and could be overwhelming, even with the success the team has had.
Cash wants to make sure they don't look at it that way.
"It's pretty unprecedented," he said. "None of us can really understand it, comprehend all of it. But you just got to take _ I think the best that we can do is continue to find a way to take each case as a case-by-case (basis).
"It's not fair to the player or to the players to lump them all together. There's individual players that have dealt with stuff in the past and they could be recurring. There are some situations that have just kind of popped out of nowhere and we hopefully are doing a good job of taking case by case, and that's how we're making our decisions."
More important, and impressive, is how the Rays have been able to continue to plug in replacements, drawing on depth they knew would be important but couldn't have expected it to this degree.
"Look, I think a lot of teams in baseball right now, their depth is being tested," Cash said. "Even dating back to spring training in Port Charlotte, it was something that we thought very positively about, that they were going to have a strong influence given if guys went down.
"Can you anticipate what's taken place over here, over the last three weeks? No. But it does speak volumes about the work those individuals have done to help us win games.
"And it speaks volumes to the work that our front office has done to find that type of depth, and these guys have really filled in, filled big shoes and filled in pretty admirably."
And, Cash said, they've done it with a team-first approach.
"You do sense that," he said. "Anytime you lose to injury one of the guys we had penciled in to do big things, I don't think it's on one person to fulfill that void. It takes multiple, and I'm glad that that's the way, or happy that that's the way, they're going about it.
"We need then to continue to feel that way. Because we're getting to a point where we're going to have to lean on some of these guys that maybe don't have a wealth of experience but have done some good things here as of late that are allowing them to be successful for our team."
For perspective, consider as the Rays played Saturday's game, they were without their top catcher (Zunino); three members of the rotation (Yonny Chirinos, Charlie Morton, Yarbrough); seven relievers projected for the opening-day bullpen (Jose Alvarado, Nick Anderson, Jalen Beeks, Oliver Drake, Andrew Kittredge, Colin Poche, Roe); and their top pitching prospect and replacement (Brendan McKay).
