Díaz’s Ninth-Inning Homer Seals It as Rays Beat Guardians 7-3 to Even the ALCS at 2-2

CLEVELAND

The Tampa Bay Rays spent three games waiting for the heart of their order to show up in this American League Championship Series. It arrived all at once on Saturday night. Yandy Díaz, Jonathan Aranda and Junior Caminero drove in five runs between them, Nick Martinez allowed one run over 5 1/3 innings, and the Rays beat the Cleveland Guardians 7-3 in Game 4 at Progressive Field to tie the best-of-seven series at two games apiece — and to guarantee that the pennant fight goes back to Florida.

Cleveland came in one win from taking a 3-1 series lead and moving within a victory of its first World Series since 2016. Instead, the Guardians watched a 1-0 lead dissolve against the first sustained offense Tampa Bay has produced all series, watched their own best rally die one hit short in the seventh, and now face a Game 5 on Sunday that decides who flies south with the lead. The winner of this series opens the World Series against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday, October 23.

The night began exactly how the home crowd of 33,355 wanted it. Steven Kwan opened the bottom of the first with a single, took second on a wild pitch, and scored when Chase DeLauter, batting with a full count, singled to right. DeLauter was thrown out stretching for second on the play, but the Guardians had the game's first run, and Martinez looked like he might be in for a short night.

He was not. Martinez settled in completely, allowing just two hits all night — one run, three strikeouts and two walks on 79 pitches — and earned the win. Cleveland's answer was a planned bullpen game, and for a while it worked beautifully: opener Shawn Armstrong threw a scoreless first, and Foster Griffin, the second arm of the night, struck out five over 3 2/3 innings of one-run relief.

That one run tied the game in the third. Díaz doubled to right with two outs, and Aranda followed with a single up the middle — the first of his three hits — to make it 1-1. From there the game tightened into a one-run standoff, two pitching staffs trading zeros while the series hung on every pitch.

The catch, and the answer

The defining defensive play came in the fourth. Caminero drove a ball deep to center field that looked like extra bases off the bat. Center fielder Petey Halpin — whose two-run homer had won Game 3 for Cleveland on Thursday — raced back, crashed into the wall and held on, robbing Caminero of extra bases and keeping the game tied. Halpin stayed in the game after the collision. For two innings, it was the moment of the night.

Caminero got his answer in the sixth, and it came off Daniel Espino, who took the loss. Espino, who had ended the fifth by striking out Díaz, walked Aranda and Chandler Simpson to open the inning. Caminero then doubled down the left-field line, Aranda scored, and Tampa Bay had its first lead of the night at 2-1 — an RBI double, not the two-run triple some early reports turned it into.

The Guardians nearly escaped there. Tim Herrin relieved Espino with runners on second and third and nobody out. Ben Williamson, pinch-hitting, grounded to first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, and Simpson — one of the fastest runners in the game — ran on contact and was thrown out at the plate, beaten by multiple steps, as the Akron Beacon Journal described it. Victor Mesa Jr. struck out, Jonny DeLuca popped out to short, and a golden chance had produced exactly one run.

Kevin Cash then underlined how badly the Rays wanted this one. In the bottom of the sixth he called on Freddy Peralta — Tuesday's Game 2 winner and Tampa Bay's scheduled Game 6 starter — on what was Peralta's regular throw day between starts, and Peralta recorded the inning's final two outs to protect the one-run lead, a maneuver USA Today noted could complicate his availability when the series returns to Florida.

Three runs, one error, and a rally that died at 5-3

The game broke open in the seventh, and DeLauter will see it in his sleep. Richie Palacios and Taylor Walls reached ahead of Aranda, who lined a single to right off Slade Cecconi. DeLauter, charging in to scoop the ball off the grass, whiffed on it entirely, and by the time Cleveland recovered it, Palacios and Walls had scored and Aranda was standing on third. Simpson's sacrifice fly brought Aranda home, and a 2-1 nail-biter was suddenly 5-1.

Cleveland's answer came with two outs and nobody on, which only made it hurt worse. Rookie Travis Bazzana turned on an Ian Seymour pitch and drove his first career postseason home run, a 374-foot solo shot to right, to make it 5-2. Patrick Bailey followed with a single high off the left-field wall, Angel Martínez blooped a single into center, and Brayan Rocchio singled to left to score Bailey. Progressive Field was shaking, the tying runs were on base, and Kwan — the man who had started the scoring in the first — grounded out to first to end it. The rally had produced two runs, four hits and one enduring what-if.

There was one more scare in the eighth, when pinch-hitter David Fry drove a ball deep with Jo Adell aboard — a gargantuan shot that hooked foul, per the Beacon Journal — before Cam Booser struck him out swinging to keep it at 5-3.

Díaz removed the doubt in the ninth. Palacios singled off Matt Festa, Walls sacrificed him to second, and Díaz drove the ball the other way, to right. It looked like a routine fly ball off the bat; it simply kept carrying, clearing the wall at 349 feet for a two-run homer and a 7-3 lead. Bryan Baker took it home in the bottom half: Bazzana singled, Bailey grounded into a double play, and Martínez struck out swinging for the final out.

The big three woke up

The story under the story is the top of Tampa Bay's order. Díaz, Aranda and Caminero arrived Saturday a combined 5-for-34 in the series, with no home runs and a single RBI between them — the slump USA Today had been asking Cash about for two days. Cash shuffled his lineup card to shake them loose, even dropping the speedster Simpson into the third spot: a hitter with no career home runs batting third in a postseason game, something that has happened only a handful of times in baseball history, according to USA Today. The three of them finished 6-for-14 with five runs driven in. Aranda went 3-for-4 with two RBI and two runs scored, Díaz doubled and homered, and Caminero's lone hit was, until the ninth, the biggest swing of the night.

The box score told the rest plainly. Tampa Bay outhit Cleveland 11-8 and played errorless baseball; the Guardians made two errors — DeLauter's the costliest — and cycled through seven pitchers in a bullpen game that held together for five innings and then did not. Martinez earned the win and Espino the loss.

Game 5 is Sunday at 5 p.m. ET at Progressive Field, the last game of the series in Cleveland, with the winner taking a 3-2 lead back to Tampa Bay for Game 6 on Monday and, if it is needed, Game 7 on Tuesday. Milwaukee, which swept the Dodgers to win the National League pennant, is already waiting for Friday's World Series opener — our look at the Brewers' long week of waiting tells that side of the story. Whatever happens Sunday, the Rays have already taken this series back to Florida. They will arrive there with their best hitters awake.