The Rays didn’t just close out the ALCS on Monday night. They slammed the door on Cleveland’s brief offensive awakening and punched their ticket to the World Series with a 7-3 Game 6 win.
Tampa Bay’s third trip to the Fall Classic in franchise history was built on the kind of balance that carried them through the series. Junior Caminero and Yandy Diaz each launched two-run homers, while the pitching staff once again did the heavy lifting. The Rays allowed only 11 runs over the final 44 innings of the ALCS, good for a 2.25 ERA, and their starters were even sharper: eight earned runs and 28 hits in 33 ⅔ innings, a 2.14 ERA.
Freddy Peralta was the center of it all, just as he’d been for much of the stretch run. The 30-year-old trade deadline pickup took home ALCS MVP honors after winning Game 2 with six shutout innings, then returning in Game 4 out of the bullpen to record the final two outs of the sixth inning for a hold. He was back again for Game 6 and gave Tampa Bay 5 ⅓ innings, allowing one run and five hits while picking up his second win of the series.
Peralta’s turnaround has been dramatic. When the Rays got him from the Mets before the deadline, he was sitting at 5-9 with a 4.99 ERA and a 1.48 WHIP.
Tampa Bay made changes right away, telling him to pitch only from the stretch, speed up his delivery and lean more on his changeup, among other tweaks. Since then, the results have been staggering: over his last 10 appearances - nine starts - he is 7-0 with a 0.89 ERA, a 0.91 WHIP and 39 strikeouts, with just five earned runs allowed in 50 ⅔ innings.
Cleveland’s night unraveled in a hurry, especially when the game got into the later innings. The Guardians went 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position, and two of their runs came in the eighth inning when reliever Ian Seymour walked in one run and then hit Angel Martinez to force in another. By then, Tampa Bay had already created separation and never let go.
That was a sharp contrast from the way Cleveland had looked for much of the postseason. After falling behind the White Sox 2-0 in the ALDS, the Guardians caught fire with nine runs in Game 3.
Then, with elimination staring them down again in Game 4, catcher Patrick Bailey delivered a pinch-hit home run that sparked a comeback and kept their season alive. Suddenly, an offense that had spent much of the year searching for a groove looked dangerous.
Cleveland won five of six and grabbed a 2-1 ALCS lead over the Rays, scoring 30 runs in those victories.
But once the series turned against them, the bats vanished. In Cleveland’s four ALCS losses, the team managed just eight total runs. Across the series, the Guardians finished 7-for-35 with runners in scoring position, including 4-for-23 after Game 1.
José Ramírez and rookie Chase DeLauter were productive in the postseason, but the rest of the lineup couldn’t keep up. Ramírez posted a .908 OPS, DeLauter came in at .848 and Bailey checked in at .788, while the rest of the order never consistently pressured Tampa Bay’s pitching. Nathaniel Lowe (.646), Jo Adell (.624), Steven Kwan (.564), Travis Bazzana (.559) and Brayan Rocchio (.354) all struggled to make much of an impact.
That kind of underperformance wasn’t new for Cleveland. During the regular season, the Guardians ranked 27th in home runs with 162 and slugging at .380, 24th in runs scored with 678 and tied for 21st in wRC+ at 97. Their OPS with runners in scoring position was .708, already one of the weaker marks in the league, and that number dropped to .576 in the ALCS.
Cleveland made a run at defying those numbers and hung around longer than many expected. The Guardians finished the regular season 85-77, got a playoff berth and first-round bye despite owning the 11th-best record in baseball, then survived elimination three times against Chicago before climbing into a 2-1 series lead over Tampa Bay. But over six games, the Rays looked like the No. 1 seed they had been all along.
For a few nights, Cleveland’s offense gave the impression that it had finally turned a corner. Then Tampa Bay answered with the kind of pitching, power and precision that ended the conversation.
In Other News...
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For Tampa Bay, the reminder is less about payroll than about roster construction and how thin the margin can be when so much of the group comes from outside the system. Free agency has barely mattered for either clubs core, but the Rays path has been especially dependent on identifying the right pieces and fitting them together quickly. The unresolved question is whether that model can keep producing October-caliber teams when the talent pipeline looks different from Milwaukees and the margin for error stays so small. [Read more 🡒]