ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Rays manager Joe Maddon kept summoning relievers, moved to full mad-scientist mode by inspiration, desperation and elimination.
Jeremy Hellickson is Maddon’s Phil Hughes. Not to be trusted. He had a 5.17 ERA during the regular season and was only starting Tuesday’s Game 4 because rookie Chris Archer had run out of gas. But Maddon’s leash was going to be short.
In his imagination, Hellickson would face 12 batters and be removed before facing David Ortiz a second time in what Maddon hoped would be the third inning. But Hellickson lasted just six batters, loading the bases with no outs in the second and that set off a chain reaction in which he ultimately used nine relievers — a record for a nine-inning playoff game.
That wasn’t even the most bizarre part. That would be the identity of pitcher No. 10. The game concluded with David Price warming. Yep, if Tampa Bay had forced extra innings, its Game 5 starter Thursday was coming on in relief past midnight on Tuesday.
“I don’t know who would have started Game 5,” Maddon said. “But you can’t play Game 5, unless you win Game 4.”
There will be no Game 5. Maybe no more Price in Tampa any longer either. He will be on the trade block in an offseason that has now begun for the Rays.
Boston with its relentless offense won 3-1 — the Red Sox drew eight walks and made those nine Tampa Bay hurlers throw 163 pitches. Boston will face the winner of Oakland-Detroit in the ALCS.
Yet what will be remembered most from Boston’s clinch was how close it came to not happening in Game 4. How close what Red Sox reliever Craig Breslow described as the Rays’ “army of guys” nearly tag-teamed a victory one pitching change at a time.
“I really thought we can do 1-0,” Maddon said. “I really did.”
Hellickson, Jamey Wright, Game 1 starter Matt Moore and Alex Torres combined for six shutout innings, and Tampa Bay broke through with a run in the bottom of the sixth. The Rays were nine outs away from making this crazy mosaic work. But Jake McGee put two men on in the seventh before Joel Peralta — with some irony for this night, because he was the most used reliever in the majors this year — threw a run-scoring wild pitch with his first offering and yielded an RBI infield single with his third.
To try to keep the deficit at 2-1, Maddon called on his closer, Fernando Rodney, to pitch the ninth. But Rodney walked two, hit one, loaded the bases and was booed off the field. But what this did was force Maddon to bring the pitcher he had been saving for long relief and extra innings, Archer, into the game to yield a Dustin Pedroia sacrifice fly. Then with the lefty force Ortiz due and not wanting to fall behind any further, Maddon called on his last relief arm, southpaw Wesley Wright, to be pitcher No. 9.
This is why Price began to warm as Boston closer Koji Uehara was going 1-2-3 in the ninth. Maddon knew that meant Game 5 — if there would be one — “would have looked a lot like Game 4,” another procession of relievers from this baseball mad scientist. He would have had to start one, likely Wright.
“The way it was working at the beginning there [with Hellickson failing], I could see it was just not going to work and we had to do something differently,” Maddon said. “We became a little bit more extemporaneous at that point.”
Extemporaneous nearly worked. But didn’t. Nine was not enough, and the Rays never got to 10 at 10 — Price in extra innings. Their season and perhaps Price’s Tampa Bay career concluded with the bizarre sight of him warming up in the bullpen.
“It was an interesting game,” Maddon said.
Inspiration. Desperation. Elimination.