TAMPA -- The Rays had every reason to feel weary heading into Wednesday afternoon’s series finale against the A’s at George M. Steinbrenner Field.
It was their ninth straight game. It was a quick turnaround, with a 12:10 p.m. ET first pitch after an extra-inning loss Tuesday night. The conditions weren’t ideal, between the heat and the rain sporadically showering the field in the early going. A much-needed off-day was only hours away, the only thing standing between Tampa Bay and a 10-game road trip heading into the All-Star break.
But after losing four of their past five games to last-place teams, the Rays returned to form and avoided a sweep with a 6-5 win over the A’s to finish their brief stop at home.
“That was a big one today,” right fielder Josh Lowe said. “We just needed a reset day tomorrow, but glad we could finish this little portion strong, get a win and have some momentum going into the road trip.”
Much of that momentum came from starter Ryan Pepiot, who put together his 11th quality start of the season after a rough outing in Baltimore and a shaky start to Wednesday’s outing.
Sweating on a humid afternoon and struggling to execute his two-strike pitches, Pepiot gave up a two-out homer to Brent Rooker and walked the next two batters in a 26-pitch first inning, then he surrendered another two-out shot to Max Schuemann in the second.
But he settled in after that, retiring 13 of the final 15 batters he faced. The right-hander racked up nine strikeouts and didn’t walk a batter after the second inning, keeping the Rays in the game and giving them a chance to win.
“Just giving the guys a chance, because you know what this offense is capable of,” Pepiot said.
The offense’s ability showed up in three ways throughout the rest of the game. First came the speed, courtesy of Jake Mangum.
Mangum put the Rays on the board in the second inning with the 24th inside-the-park home run in franchise history and the third in the Majors this season. The outfielder thought he might have cleared the center-field fence for his second big league homer.
Instead, it bounced high off the wall, just out of the reach of spectacular playmaker Denzel Clarke, and Mangum scored standing up.
Mangum said he scored on a triple and an error during his sophomore year in college, but that was the closest he could remember getting to a true inside-the-park home run before accomplishing the feat against the A’s.
“I was kind of watching the ball around first into second, and then whenever I hit second, took off,” Mangum said. “Around second base, kind of turned it on and just kept running.”
But the Rays were still down a run, in danger of being swept, before breaking out the bats in a five-run sixth inning that demonstrated what has made their lineup so dangerous the past six weeks.
Tampa Bay sent nine batters to the plate, the 17th time this season the entire lineup has hit in the same inning. It also marked the 10th time this year the Rays scored at least five runs in an inning.
“It goes to show, once we get going on offense, not much can stop us,” Lowe said.
Lowe went deep off Athletics starter Mitch Spence to tie the game, then Brandon Lowe extended his career-best hitting streak to 18 games with a double. That is the longest active run in the Majors and tied for the third longest in club history, matching similar streaks by Wilson Ramos in 2018 and Quinton McCracken in 1998.
“Hopefully he'll get to like 50 games and he becomes the best hitter in MLB,” said Yandy Díaz, who currently owns the longest streak in Rays history at 20 games, through interpreter Eddie Rodriguez.
Meanwhile, Díaz could make a case for himself as MLB’s best hitter over the past month. After batting .400 with a 1.079 OPS in June, he bashed a go-ahead two-run shot off the scoreboard, his 14th of the season.
Junior Caminero doubled, and they tacked on two more runs on a pair of RBI singles by Chandler Simpson and Matt Thaiss.
Tampa Bay wound up needing every one of those runs to withstand the A’s ninth-inning rally, which Edwin Uceta ended by striking out Nick Kurtz with the bases loaded.
“The add-on runs there ended up being extremely crucial, and they came with two out, so encouraged by everybody playing a role,” manager Kevin Cash said. “You saw a glimpse of what the offense has looked like for quite some time now. Happy to see it kind of break out there.”