The Guardians walked into ALCS Game 1 in St. Petersburg and took control of the series opener in the one way the Rays never expected: by weathering the early push, then landing the bigger blows late in a 7-3 comeback win Monday night.
For six innings, it looked like Tampa Bay had everything lined up. The Rays were in command, leaning on the kind of clean, efficient baseball that has defined them for years. Then Cleveland cracked it open with the sort of surge that carried it here - power, patience and the ability to punish a game the moment it loosens.
Chase DeLauter and Patrick Bailey each homered to pull the Guardians even, but Bailey’s blast was the one that changed the tone in a hurry. With Rays ace Drew Rasmussen already at 90 pitches through six innings and looking sharp outside of DeLauter’s opposite-field homer, Tampa Bay sent him back out for the seventh. Bailey made the move pay immediately, turning the first pitch he saw into a 436-foot drive to right-center, the longest homer of his MLB career.
The decisive hit came in the eighth. Nathaniel Lowe lined a two-run single up the middle to bring home DeLauter and José Ramírez, finally pushing Cleveland into the lead for good. The Guardians added three more runs in the ninth to stretch the cushion and finish the job.
It was the kind of win that can sting a favored opponent. For most of the night, the Rays looked ready to cruise behind the strengths that have made them such a tough out. Instead, Cleveland matched them where it mattered most and got a huge lift from its bullpen.
Foster Griffin covered four innings of two-run ball, and Daniel Espino, Joey Cantillo, Hunter Gaddis and Erik Sabrowski each handled an inning of relief to keep the game within reach. That setup allowed Cade Smith to finish the ninth.
Now the Guardians head into the heart of the series with momentum and something even more valuable: a road win in hand before Games 3-5 shift to Cleveland. In a matchup between two organizations built on pitching, defense and sharp decision-making, big margins figure to be rare. Tight games are the expectation from here.
The series also carries the weight of history. The Rays, despite arriving in the league in 1998, have never won the World Series and have only reached it twice, in 2008 and 2020. Cleveland’s drought is even longer, sitting at 77 seasons, the longest in MLB.
And the numbers around Game 1 only sharpen the value of the Guardians’ comeback. In best-of-seven postseason series, teams that win the opener go on to take the series 127 of 197 times, or 64%. In the current 2-3-2 format, road teams that grab Game 1 have gone on to win the series 41 of 73 times, or 56%.
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The backstory only adds to the fascination around him, because the move that brought him to Tampa Bay was viewed at the time as a fairly small transaction. Now, with Caminero carrying so much of the clubs future and changing the conversation around the lineup again, it is easy to see why Rays followers keep circling back to the details of how he got here. [Read more 🡒]