CLEVELAND – The Tampa Bay Rays are on the verge of making their third-ever appearance in the World Series and the way the American League Championship Series has suddenly turned, the Cleveland Guardians appear hard-pressed to stop them.
Another gem from ace Drew Rasmussen, dominant over seven innings, along with just enough offence from their high-pressure lineup paced a 3-1 victory Sunday evening, sending the best-of-seven back to Tropicana Field with the AL East champs up 3-2.
Freddy Peralta, who threw six shutout frames in Game 2 and then recorded two key outs in Saturday’s 7-3 win that swung the series, starts for the Rays, who are seeking a return to the Fall Classic for the first time since the pandemic season of 2020.
“It’s a great opportunity; all of us are thinking of it,” said Yandy Diaz, who had three hits and scored the game’s first run. “But it all ends tomorrow. We're going to win tomorrow.”
Supporting that boldness is that the Guardians are faced with running yet another bullpen game, after doing that by design in Game 4 and having Game 5 become one after Parker Messick lasted just two innings. Gavin Williams returning on short rest “is not an option,” said manager Stephen Vogt, leaving them “to look at everything after today. We'll have a plan, but we’re not sure who's going to take the ball first.”
Not ideal for an elimination game, although Cleveland’s relievers have been stellar in the series, and only their seven innings of work before a crowd 36,303 at Progressive Field kept the Rays from blowing the crucial swing game open.
Still, the collective toll of their workload from both the last round and this one – they’ve covered 61 per cent of the team’s 89 post-season innings – is a concern, especially with leverage arms Erik Sabrowski, Hunter Gaddis and Cade Smith each going one-plus and no more off-days in the series.
“It’s two nights in row we had to go to the bullpen early and when you do that, you've got to keep everybody as fresh as possible,” said Vogt. “Credit to our leverage guys, we overextended all of them and they all kept their pitch counts low, so they'll be ready to go.
“These guys know that it's all hands on deck for two more days,” he added. “It’s a dangerous game when you start chasing down-games, but we needed to tonight.”
Past history doesn’t favour the Guardians, either, as when a best-of-seven is tied 2-2, whoever takes the fifth game has gone on to win the series 46 of 69 times, or 66.7 per cent. The numbers are even better for road teams that win Game 5, taking seven of 10 series, a group the Rays will try to join after taking two in a row after falling behind 2-1.
“It was a huge, huge couple of games here to get us back into that spot,” said closer Bryan Baker, who handled the ninth for his second save of the series. “The first goal was just to get back to the Trop. To be able to go back in this position is exactly what we wanted to do. Super proud of the guys to be able to put us in this spot.”
The Rays put Messick, originally slated to pitch Monday but moved up thanks to Friday’s rain out, on the defensive from the jump, and he did well to avoid more damage than the two runs he allowed.
In the first, Jonny DeLuca’s bases-loaded walk opened the scoring after Chandler Simpson, who fell behind 0-2 but worked the count back to 2-2, beat out a chopper up the middle to load the bases and keep the inning alive.
The Rays tacked on another in the second when Ben Williamson led off with a single, advanced on a Diaz base hit and scored on a one-out single by the suddenly hot Jonathan Aranda. Messick rallied to strike out Ryan Vilade and Junior Caminero, although they were his final batters after 57 pitches.
“That was the plan, to get the pitch-count up early, make it tougher on him,” said catcher Liam Hicks, the Toronto native who added an RBI single in the third. “He's obviously had such a good year, so you've just got to try and wear him down, and the team did a really good job. And I think that impacted the rest of the game when we get into the bullpen. Hopefully it helps us tomorrow, too.”
Hicks knocked in Simpson, who doubled and stole third, with a single off lefty Tim Herrin, but the Guardians again prevented a bigger rally there and negated another in the fourth, when Steven Kwan threw out Taylor Walls at home trying to score on another Aranda single.
Cleveland’s bullpen then shut the door, but Rasmussen smothered the Guardians until the sixth, when Kwan led off with a base hit, took third on a single by Jose Ramirez that extended his club record post-season on-base streak to 17 games, and scored on Chase DeLauter’s RBI groundout.
Rasmussen then put up another zero in the seventh, erasing Nathaniel Lowe’s leadoff single on Patrick Bailey’s double-play grounder, to cap a four-hit, one-walk, six-strikeout effort that included some tweaks along the way.
“Usually you can tell in the bullpen if he's really dialled in and today, I didn't really think like, oh this is special or anything like that, but once he gets on the mound it's completely different,” said Hicks. “It's just pinpoint command, and by that first inning, I realized he's got his good stuff. Lucky for him, he's a guy that wants to talk between innings. I don't think his sinker was working quite the way he wanted it to, so we adjusted to more four-seams, more cutters. It's fun to work with him.”
Another display of the elite defence – particularly from Walls at shortstop and Ben Williamson at second base – kept him rolling, too, and the Rays have been cleaner on the field so far in the series. That element, Rays manager Kevin Cash said, is “so important when you're playing a team like the Guardians, because you don't strike them out. They just don't strike out.”
“They're having tremendous at-bats,” he continued. “Their decision-making with two strikes has been elite this entire series. So you know they're going to put the ball in play; the more balls put in play, the more pressure there is on the defence to do that.”
The Rays are handling that heat, are applying pressure of their own and getting the bullpen work they need behind their dominant starters.
Cam Booser gave up a two-out single to Kwan in the eighth, and then, as the crowd sang, “Jose, Jose, Jose” with Ramirez at the plate, Tyler Wells came on to strike him out. Baker followed in the ninth to close things out a second straight day, and the Rays headed home a win away from a date with the Milwaukee Brewers.
