For five innings on Monday night, the American League Championship Series looked like it belonged to Tampa Bay. By the end of the evening, Cleveland had taken it. The Guardians rallied from a 2-0 deficit to beat the Rays 7-3 in Game 1 at Tropicana Field, scoring in each of the late innings and handing Tampa Bay its first loss of this postseason. Game 2 arrives quickly, on Tuesday night, and the Rays will hand the ball to Freddy Peralta with the series suddenly asking them a harder question.
Our ALCS Game 1 coverage set up a matchup between a Rays team rolling through October and a Guardians club that had already survived one elimination scare. Game 1 managed to honor both descriptions — Tampa Bay controlled the start, Cleveland owned the finish.
Tampa Bay strikes first, Rasmussen holds the line
The Rays scored in the first inning against Cleveland starter Foster Griffin. Junior Caminero drove in a run with an RBI single, and Jonny DeLuca followed with an RBI single of his own, giving Tampa Bay a 2-0 lead before the home crowd had settled in. With Drew Rasmussen on the mound, that lead looked substantial. Rasmussen carried the 2-0 advantage into the sixth inning, keeping Cleveland's lineup quiet and positioning the Rays to open the series exactly the way they had opened the previous round, when they swept the New York Yankees in the Division Series.
Instead, the sixth inning changed the shape of the night. Chase DeLauter, Cleveland's young outfielder, drove an opposite-field solo home run — the first postseason home run of his career — to cut the deficit in half. It was a single swing, but it was also the first sign that Rasmussen's hold on the game was loosening and that Cleveland's dugout believed the comeback was available.
Bailey ties it, Lowe breaks it open
The tying blow came an inning later, and it was not a cheap one. Patrick Bailey led off the seventh with a solo home run measured at 436 feet, leveling the game at 2-2 and ending Rasmussen's night. A game Tampa Bay had managed carefully for six innings was suddenly even, with Cleveland's bullpen in strong position and the Rays needing to find outs from a different set of arms.
The eighth inning decided it. José Ramírez opened with an infield single, DeLauter followed with a double, and Tampa Bay turned to Ian Seymour in search of an escape. Nathaniel Lowe spoiled the plan on an 0-2 pitch, lining a two-run single that scored both runners and put Cleveland ahead 4-2. There was a layer of familiarity to the moment: Lowe was originally drafted by Tampa Bay, and on Monday his biggest swing of October came against the organization that brought him into professional baseball.
Tampa Bay answered once, on a Cedric Mullins home run in the bottom of the eighth that trimmed the margin to 4-3, but Cleveland closed the door in the ninth. Ramírez added an RBI single, and Jo Adell delivered a two-run double to stretch the lead to 7-3, turning a tense opener into a comfortable final margin.
Ramírez, DeLauter and a bullpen that travels
The individual lines explain why Cleveland feels so difficult to finish off right now. Ramírez and DeLauter finished with three hits each. Ramírez has now driven in a run in four consecutive playoff games, tied for the longest postseason streak in franchise history — the kind of steady production that lets a lineup survive quiet early innings. DeLauter, meanwhile, paired his first postseason home run with the eighth-inning double that set up the go-ahead runs.
Behind them, the bullpen did the unglamorous work. Five Cleveland relievers combined for five innings of one-run, two-hit ball. Hunter Gaddis, credited with the win at 1-0, was part of that chain, and Cade Smith finished it with a perfect ninth inning. For a team playing its fourth straight win-or-go-home style game in a row, that depth matters as much as any single swing.
Game 2: Messick against Peralta, with history in the background
Cleveland has now won four straight games after falling behind 0-2 to the Chicago White Sox in the Division Series, becoming only the 11th team to come back from an 0-2 deficit in a best-of-five series. Tampa Bay, by contrast, is dealing with something new this October: a loss, and a series deficit at home.
Game 2 is Tuesday, October 13 at Tropicana Field, with first pitch at 5:00 p.m. PT on TBS and TruTV. Cleveland will start rookie left-hander Parker Messick, trusting a young arm in the biggest game of his career to date. Tampa Bay counters with right-hander Freddy Peralta, whose job is straightforward to describe and difficult to do: restore the early-game control Rasmussen gave the Rays in Game 1, and keep Cleveland's late-inning lineup from getting a second look at the game.
The stakes behind the matchup stretch beyond one series. Cleveland's World Series drought dates to 1948, the longest active drought among clubs that have won a title. Tampa Bay has never won a World Series at all. One of those waits will move a step closer to ending this week. After Monday, Cleveland holds the edge — and Tampa Bay has one night to take it back.
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