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 again 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.
Starters for Game 6 Monday night were TBD before the game, but Freddy Peralta, who recorded two key outs in Saturday’s 7-3 win, is on turn for the Rays. The Guardians, meanwhile, are faced with bringing back Gavin Williams on short rest or 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.
Cleveland’s relievers have been stellar in the series and it was only their seven innings of stellar work before a crowd 36,303 at Progressive Field that 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.
Past history doesn’t favour them, 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.
A longer outing from Messick would have helped reset the group, but the Rays grinded him out from the jump, but he did well to avoid more damage.
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 Yandy Diaz base hit and scored on a one-out base hit by the suddenly hot Jonathan Aranda. Messick, who was on normal rest but lined up for Monday until Friday’s rainout, rallied to strike out Ryan Vilade and Junior Caminero, his final batters after 57 pitches.
“I just kind of just did my normal weekly routine like I was throwing on the fifth day and obviously the original plan, there was no fifth day,” Messick said Saturday. “You’ve just kind of got to play it by ear. I just wanted to prepare the same way I’ve prepared all year. Thankfully, I did because here we are.”
The Rays pushed across a third run in the third when Chandler Simpson doubled, stole third and scored on Liam Hicks’ base hit 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 shut the door there but Rasmussen kept them smothered 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 came around on Chase DeLauter’s RBI groundout.
Rasmussen 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.
Another display of strong Rays defence helped him along, an element that 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. Bryan 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.
