Labor Day is around the corner, which means it’s time to start obsessing over the Major League Baseball standings.

Check the division races first. Move to the wild-card standings next. And then pull out the calculator and figure out just what it would take for the Rays to still be standing on the season’s final day.

And the correct answer is:

A miracle.

Every time you think the Rays have rediscovered their footing, they end up sliding back down the hill. With a chance to win a series and make up ground on the team directly ahead of them in the standings on Wednesday, the Rays blew a ninth-inning lead and lost 4-3 in 10 innings to the Guardians in Cleveland.

Closer Pete Fairbanks gave up a one-out homer to Nolan Jones — just his fourth of the season — in the ninth and Griffin Jax surrendered a two-out, two-strike single to Kyle Manzardo to drive in the designated runner in the 10th inning.

It was the fifth blown save of the season for Fairbanks, who has a team-high 22 saves.

“There’s not really a worse feeling than a blown save,” Fairbanks told reporters in Cleveland. “So I’m wearing that one pretty hard, just given the good start from (Drew Rasmussen) and a couple of timely hits. Then to come up and just throw an absolute cookie into the loop is exorbitantly frustrating.

“Especially given that we’ve been playing pretty well over the past couple of weeks. So to lose that one does not feel very good.”

The Rays won the series opener, outscored the Guardians 12-7 over the three days, got a 2.65 ERA from their starting pitchers and still managed to lose two out of three games.

“We’re not playing good enough,” manager Kevin Cash said. “Because (if) we get three quality starts, we should win more than one game.”

The mistakes on Wednesday — aside from the bullpen collapse — seemed minor. And yet, in retrospect, they set Tampa Bay up for another failure.

The Rays took an early 3-1 lead, with Everson Pereira getting an RBI on a bloop single and Brandon Lowe adding a majestic, two-run homer. Unfortunately, the Rays stopped hitting at that point, going 1-for-23 over the final seven-plus innings.

That may not have mattered, except Cleveland third baseman Will Wilson led off the fifth with a short fly to center field that had an expected catch rate of 93% according to StatCast. But Pereira stumbled while running in for the ball, and it fell for a single. Three batters later, Steven Kwan drove in Wilson with a single to make it a 3-2 game.

“(Rasmussen) was outstanding. He was really, really good for us,” Cash said. “One run came across. I think the second one, we’ve got to make a play behind him.”

It also didn’t help that Cleveland is better than the Rays when it comes to playing small ball. Rookie shortstop Carson Williams led off the 10th and failed to move the designated runner over when he struck out. With Nick Fortes and Chandler Simpson going down meekly, the Rays were in trouble.

Cleveland catcher Bo Naylor executed a perfect sacrifice bunt to move the runner over in the Guardians’ half of the inning, and Manzardo drove him in with the game-winner on a single up the middle.

Of course, it was all made possible when Fairbanks left a slider in the middle of the plate to Jones.

“I threw 13 pitches, and 12 of them were good,” Fairbanks said. “One of them got hit 14,000 feet into the Cleveland jet stream.”

With a 64-69 record and only 29 games remaining, Tampa Bay’s odds for a late pennant run are bleak.

Forget the magic number. The tragic number to be eliminated — the combination of Tampa Bay losses and Seattle victories — is now at 23.

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