TAMPA -- Coming off a 10-inning slugfest on Saturday and playing their third straight game in the midday heat, Sunday’s series finale at George M. Steinbrenner Field was bound to be “more of an energy test,” Rays shortstop Taylor Walls said.
“It comes down to who can reset and who can bring the most energy,” Walls added Saturday night.
It took a little while for the Rays to get going, but they had just the right source of energy available when it mattered most.
After Yandy Díaz hit a game-tying homer in the fifth and doubled with one out in the eighth, José Caballero came off the bench and provided a jolt with his baserunning. Caballero stole third base and scored on a sacrifice fly, and Edwin Uceta nailed down the final six outs in the Rays’ 3-2 win over the Marlins on Sunday afternoon.
The victory capped a 5-1 homestand for the Rays, who are an MLB-best 14-4 since May 20 and are unbeaten in their last six series.
“Cabby is about as fearless of a player that I've been around,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “He knows the purpose of him going in there.”
Indeed, he did.
“If he puts me in to pinch-run,” Caballero said, “it’s to run.”
Coming off the bench with the game tied, Caballero watched closely as reliever Calvin Faucher fired a first-pitch cutter to Lowe. Caballero knew he needed to pick a good pitch to run on -- especially with a right-handed pitcher on the mound and a left-handed hitter at the plate -- if he was going to steal third.
Caballero said he noticed Faucher “really wasn’t paying attention to me.” So when his second pitch was a high curveball, he took off.
“You either get thrown out or you'll be at third with one out. It's either one or the other,” Caballero said. “So I just [took] the risk and it paid off. I'm happy that it did.”
Caballero swiped third easily. That gave him 21 steals, tied for the most in the American League after he led the AL with 44 last season. And it changed the dynamic of the inning. Now, all the Rays needed was a well-placed ball in play to pull ahead.
And they got exactly that from Lowe, who lofted a 1-2 curveball to center. Caballero scored without even having to slide.
But the Rays weren’t out of the woods yet. They still needed three more outs.
With their bullpen in need of a lift after taking on a heavy workload this homestand, starter Drew Rasmussen handled the heavy lifting by breezing through six innings on 74 pitches while permitting only six hits and a walk.
Rasmussen's 23-inning scoreless streak ended in the first, when he gave up a run on an Otto Lopez single. He surrendered another in the fifth, but otherwise delivered more of the steady brilliance the Rays have come to expect since his return to the rotation.
“[The bullpen] carried a load yesterday, and just the ability to give a couple guys one inning off is big,” Rasmussen said. “Especially [because] we've still got a couple days here before our next off-day, trying to give those guys a break when we can is huge.”
Rasmussen just needed some run support to avoid his first loss since May 11, and he finally got it in the fifth, when Díaz hammered a 1-0 fastball from Valente Bellozo out to right field for a game-tying homer. He came through again in the eighth, ripping a one-out double to left then giving way to Caballero as a pinch-runner.
“There are days that we're not going to hit, offense is not going to be there,” Díaz said through interpreter Eddie Rodriguez. “But today, defense was there, and our baserunning was good, and we did our job.”
So, too, did Uceta. It’s been an up-and-down season for the right-hander, who broke out in a big way down the stretch last year. He entered Sunday with a 5.26 ERA this season, and he gave up a two-run homer to Lopez in his last appearance on Friday.
The Rays needed him to handle a high-leverage, multi-inning role with so many key arms unavailable, and he stepped up in a big way. He retired all six batters he faced, struck out half of them and celebrated with a big fist pump and roar when Dane Myers swung through his final fastball of the day.
“Uceta needed an outing like that, and you could tell he was pretty pumped up after that final strikeout,” Cash said. “He had good stuff, good velocity, and just commanded the ball in the zone. … That looked very close to the version of what we've seen when he's at his best.”