Botched intentional walk “embarrassing”

If you could encapsulate the 2016 Rays season into one moment, this would be it: a botched intentional walk.

For those of you who were watching college football this Saturday, you missed another mostly forgettable Rays game. Until the eighth inning that is, when, with runners on second and third, Enny Romero failed to execute a simple intentional walk to Gary Sanchez, and this happened:

That’s...not something you see every day. Truthfully, Romero is very lucky that didn’t go for a three-run homer.

Needless to say, Kevin Cash was not amused. After the game, the locker room was closed for an extended period of time. When it finally was opened, a visibly upset Cash called the eighth inning “embarrassing,” though he would not say anything further on the subject. Still, it was refreshing to see our manager get ticked off about something so worthy of being ticked off about.

For his part, Enny Romero didn’t hide in a corner. He didn’t “no comment.” He faced the music. During the post-game interview, he stated that the ball (or possibly his hand) was wet and that it slipped. He went on to say that he couldn’t have stopped his motion or else it would have resulted in a balk.

It was all so very, very Rasy.