Cleveland’s 14-Hit Rally Takes ALCS Game 1 From Tampa Bay

The Cleveland Guardians scored in each of the last four innings and beat the Tampa Bay Rays 7-3 in ALCS Game 1 on Monday night. Chase DeLauter went 3-for-4 and fell a triple short of the cycle at Tropicana Field, and five Cleveland relievers threw five innings of one-run ball after an early 2-0 hole.

Tampa Bay, a 98-win club that never trailed in a three-game sweep of the Yankees, took that same first-inning lead and then watched a contact lineup take the game apart. Game 2 is Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET, with Parker Messick starting for Cleveland and Freddy Peralta for the Rays.

A 2-0 Lead Lasted Until the Sixth

Nick Fortes threw out José Ramírez stealing in the top of the first, and the building believed the night would look like the Yankees series. Yandy Díaz doubled. Jonathan Aranda dropped down a sacrifice. Junior Caminero singled in the first run, and Jonny DeLuca added another with two outs. Taylor Walls then struck out with the bases loaded, and that was the last time Tampa Bay led with any comfort.

Foster Griffin gave up those two runs and five hits in four innings, 63 pitches, 42 strikes, and left with the game still in reach. Drew Rasmussen held Cleveland scoreless through five behind sharp infield play, including a diving stop by Ben Williamson, who was not even on the ALDS roster. Then the sixth started, and the Guardians scored in every inning after that.

HOW CLEVELAND SCORED

• Sixth: DeLauter led off with an opposite-field homer to left-center, 381 feet, his first of these playoffs, and it was 2-1.
• Seventh: Patrick Bailey hit Rasmussen’s first pitch of the inning 436 feet to center, tying the game at 2-2 and ending the starter’s night.
• Eighth: Ramírez infield single, DeLauter double, Nathaniel Lowe’s 0-2 single through the middle, and Cleveland led 4-2.
• Ninth: Ramírez singled in a run, then broke for third with two outs, and Jo Adell’s grounder found the empty left side for a two-run double and a 7-3 score.

Cedric Mullins had answered Lowe with a solo homer in the bottom of the eighth, the only run Cleveland’s bullpen allowed. After that, the ninth was insurance, and Cade Smith threw a clean 1-2-3 inning on six pitches.

Fourteen Hits Against a Staff Built to Prevent Them

The Yankees managed 12 hits in three ALDS games against Tampa Bay. Cleveland had 12 with nobody out in the ninth on Monday, then two more, and finished with 14 hits. The 2-through-5 hitters, Ramírez, DeLauter, Adell, and Lowe, went 9-for-19 and drove in six of the seven runs. Bailey supplied the other RBI with the tying homer.

THE CONTACT THAT THE YANKEES NEVER FOUND

That is the second-order problem for Tampa Bay. The ALDS pitching was not a mirage, it was a matchup, and Cleveland’s lineup kept putting the ball in play until something moved. Rasmussen struck out seven and walked nobody, and he still needed 90 pitches to get through six because the Guardians fouled pitches off and lengthened at-bats, the exact habit Kevin Cash pointed to after the loss.

Cleveland has now won four straight playoff games after dropping the first two of the ALDS at home to the White Sox, becoming the 11th club to do it in a best-of-five. Only three teams had ever lost the first two at home and still won the series, the 2001 Yankees, the 2012 Giants, and the 2015 Blue Jays, before this Guardians group joined them on Saturday. The last club to pull the 0-2 trick at all was the 2017 Yankees, against Cleveland.

Cleveland’s Relievers Took the Game From There

The names in the lede were DeLauter and Ramírez. The reason the rally had a game to win was the bullpen that had just dragged this team through an 0-2 hole on a short turnaround. Daniel Espino, Joey Cantillo, Hunter Gaddis, Erik Sabrowski, and Smith threw the last five innings and allowed two hits and one run.

THE FIVE INNINGS AFTER GRIFFIN

Espino struck out the side in the fifth. Cantillo walked two in the sixth and still kept the game at 2-1, with Walls grounding out with runners at first and second to end the inning. Gaddis got the win with a scoreless seventh. Smith, who pitched in all five games against Chicago, has now worked in all six Cleveland playoff games across 10 days. Manager Stephen Vogt said the staff stopped the early punch and kept the club in the game long enough for the bats to wake up.

We got punched early. And our pitching staff, credit to them, for stopping it and keeping us in the game as long as they did. And the offense came alive.

Stephen Vogt, Guardians manager, postgame

The cost sits on Tuesday. Messick has to give this group innings, because Smith cannot keep appearing every night, and the same relief train just threw five more.

Rasmussen Stayed for One Pitch Too Many

Rasmussen had been the face of Tampa Bay’s October. He carried a no-hitter into the eighth against the Yankees in ALDS Game 1, eight innings, one hit, 10 strikeouts. He walked into the dugout on Monday after six innings with a 2-1 lead, 90 pitches, and told Cash he was good to stay. Tyler Wells and Cam Booser were already warming. Cash was going batter to batter and did not want Steven Kwan seeing Rasmussen a fourth time. Bailey, hitting seventh, never let it get there.

The first pitch of the seventh, his 91st and final pitch, was the 436-foot homer, the longest of Bailey’s major league career. That swing also ended a franchise-record 13-game winning streak with Rasmussen on the mound. He had still thrown a quality start, eight hits, two runs, both on solo homers, seven strikeouts, no walks, and it was the fifth time a Rays pitcher had stacked consecutive playoff quality starts, a list that otherwise runs James Shields, Matt Garza, Scott Kazmir, and David Price.

I was fine. Cashy checked in with me, and I told him I was good. Unfortunately, it just didn’t unfold the way we wanted it to.

Drew Rasmussen, Rays starter, after Game 1

Booser got through the rest of the seventh with the score still 2-2. Then the eighth became the inning Tampa Bay had been able to skip for a week. Wells, pitching for the first time in a month, allowed Ramírez’s infield single and DeLauter’s double in one-third of an inning. Ian Seymour came in to face Lowe, went 0-2, and left a fastball above the zone. Lowe, who debuted with these Rays in 2019 and won a World Series with Texas in 2023, dumped it up the middle.

“I love coming back here, I really do,” Lowe said. “It’s nice to see some familiar faces on the other side.” Cole Sulser and Kevin Kelly then gave up the three-run ninth. Cash said the extra rest between series was not an excuse, and that Cleveland’s lineup pressures pitchers until a ball finds grass. The question he is left with is narrower than that. The ALDS workload was light by design. Monday was the first night those arms had to protect a one-run game in a week, and they did not.

The First Inning the Rays Could Not Finish

A crowd of 35,361 waved yellow towels and rang cowbells for Tampa Bay’s third ALCS in 29 seasons, and the first inning sounded like a sweep continuing. It was also the inning that told on this club. After DeLuca’s two-out single made it 2-0, Williamson was hit by a pitch to load the bases, and Walls struck out to end it. He finished 0-for-3 and left six runners on, lining out with a man on in the fourth and grounding into the sixth-inning out that let Cantillo walk away clean.

The 14 hits and no errors on Cleveland’s side sat next to seven hits and seven men left on for the Rays, in a game that lasted 2 hours, 57 minutes in a 72-degree dome. Caminero and DeLuca had the RBI singles. Díaz had two hits. Mullins had the homer. None of it added up to a second rally against Espino, Cantillo, Gaddis, or Smith. The defense that robbed DeLauter in the third and threw out Ramírez in the first did its job. The finishing pitch did not.

Cash said it had been a while since they lost, and that he expected a response on Tuesday. That is the honest read. This was not a club that got overwhelmed for nine innings. It was a 2-0 lead that died on a 91st pitch and a bullpen that had not been asked to work in traffic since the Yankees went home.

DeLauter Was a Triple Short of the Cycle

DeLauter turned 25 on Oct. 8, four days before this game, and batted behind Ramírez again. He singled, doubled, homered, and walked, three runs, seven total bases, and the only thing missing from a cycle was the triple. He is the third-youngest player in Cleveland history with at least seven total bases in a postseason game, behind Manny Ramirez (10 in 1995 ALCS Game 2) and Josh Naylor (nine in the 2020 wild-card round). He has a.902 OPS over his last 13 games, dating to the final week of the regular season, when he hit.287 with 16 homers and 67 RBIs.

The sixth-inning homer was a first-pitch fastball that Rasmussen later said was executed almost the way they wanted, just not far enough off the barrel. The eighth-inning double was the one that actually won the game, because Lowe’s single needed two men on. Ramírez, for his part, now has an RBI in four straight playoff games, matching franchise October streaks by Sandy Alomar in 1997 and Jim Thome in 1998-99. The middle of this order is no longer a supporting cast around one star. It is the reason 14 balls fell in a park that had been starving lineups for a week.

Messick, Once a Fan Here, Starts Game 2

Messick grew up in Plant City, about a 45-minute drive from the Trop, and sat in this building on Oct. 23, 2008, as a 7-year-old watching the Rays beat the Phillies 4-2 in World Series Game 2. Vogt named him for Tuesday on Monday, on regular rest after a 2 1/3-inning, 65-pitch, four-walk outing in ALDS Game 4. He went 12-9 with a 2.56 ERA in the regular season and is 0-1 with a 5.40 ERA in the playoffs, with 11 strikeouts in two ALDS appearances. He has thrown 193 innings this year, well past last year’s 138 1/3 between the majors and Triple-A.

I have so many good memories here. It’s an awesome experience every time I get to step out there. To be able to do it on this stage now is just an incredible opportunity.

Parker Messick, Guardians left-hander, on starting Game 2

He allowed one run in 7 2/3 innings in this park on July 26, and he said a large group of family is making the drive again, with Plant City throwing a watch party. Peralta, the other half of Tuesday, gave the Yankees one run and three hits in 4 2/3 innings in the ALDS and was 5-2 with a 3.25 ERA in 10 starts after the trade deadline. First pitch is 8 p.m. ET on TBS, truTV, UniMas, and HBO Max. If the series holds to the published slate, Game 3 is Thursday at 6 p.m. ET in Cleveland.

Cleveland scored 25 runs in its three road wins this postseason, 9 and 9 in Chicago, 7 on Monday. The Rays still have the 98-win résumé and the home crowd. They also have a bullpen that just had its first messy night of October, and a Game 2 starter who has to slow a lineup that spent four innings proving the Yankees’ 12-hit series was not the only way this staff can be reached.