TORONTO -- During the final series of the 2023 season, only a week into his Major League career, Junior Caminero put on a pregame batting practice display he still remembers. He bashed ball after ball off the upper-deck facing in left field, a show of power so jaw-dropping that it prompted cheers from the early arriving fans at Rogers Centre.
On Tuesday night, Caminero silenced the same ballpark with one swing.
Caminero crushed his first big league grand slam off Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman in the ninth inning, a tiebreaking shot that helped the Rays withstand another comeback before Mason Montgomery recorded his first save to finish an 11-9 win.
“That was electric,” Montgomery said. “That was awesome.”
The series opener was eventful for Caminero, as he also got an earring stuck and had to extricate himself from the netting down the left-field line after snagging a fifth-inning foul ball. But this ballpark is quickly becoming a favorite, regardless, considering it’s where he hit his first Major League home run (an opposite-field shot on Oct. 1, 2023) and, now, his first grand slam.
“I like it,” Caminero said, grinning. “I love it.”
The Rays were impressed by the composure Caminero showed within the at-bat, as he worked his way back into the count after taking a first-pitch strike, then whiffing on a slider in the dirt. Caminero took two more pitches outside the zone, waiting for something in the strike zone.
Caminero wound up getting a slider inside, not in the zone, and he didn’t miss it. The 21-year-old’s eighth home run of the season banged off a video board just above the second deck. According to Statcast, the ball came off his bat at 108.8 mph and traveled a projected 419 feet to cap Tampa Bay’s five-run frame.
“It's a lot of power. There's a lot of talent when we're talking about Junior,” manager Kevin Cash said. “He got that and hit it a long way.”
And the Rays’ took a wild ride to that point. They built a four-run lead in the third inning on big hits by Brandon Lowe (two-run single) and Jonathan Aranda (two-run homer) and kept at it with a homer by Danny Jansen and some heads-up baserunning by Kameron Misner, who scored from second base when Taylor Walls got picked off and caught in a rundown off first.
There were, as Cash said, “a lot of positives to pull, certainly on the offensive side.” But they were almost overshadowed.
The Rays fell behind in the eighth, when Daulton Varsho hit a three-run homer off Edwin Uceta. What could have been an encouraging win was suddenly three outs away from becoming a disheartening defeat.
“It felt like it turned into a must-win as the game evolved,” Cash said. “It could have been a really frustrating night for us, and the guys stayed at it. Give them a ton of credit for not getting overly frustrated in the ninth inning to come back against a really good pitcher.”
Caminero credited veteran teammate Travis Jankowski as “the one who won the game” for the Rays, noting his part in starting the game-winning rally. Jankowski walked, advanced to third on Jansen’s single and scored the tying run on a base hit up the middle by rookie Chandler Simpson. Brandon Lowe then singled to load the bases for Caminero.
“The whole bottom of the eighth right into the top of the ninth was wild,” Jansen said. “It happens fast, but it was just a great job throughout the whole line. Good at-bats, big hits. Chandler hitting that base hit up the middle was huge. Just a total team victory.”
But there was one more part to play, one more milestone to recognize in the Rays’ celebratory postgame clubhouse.
The Blue Jays refused to go down quietly, as Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit back-to-back RBI doubles off closer Pete Fairbanks in the ninth. George Springer walked to bring up Varsho as the potential winning run.
Looking to create a more uncomfortable at-bat for Varsho, who’d already homered twice, Cash turned to Montgomery. And the hard-throwing lefty trotted to the mound with a simple plan.
“I was just trying to throw the ball as hard as I could,” he said. “Figured if I did that, it might work out all right.”
Four pitches later, Montgomery got Varsho to hit a fly ball for the final out. Montgomery didn’t think to ask for the baseball as a keepsake. He didn’t realize it counted as a save, his first in the Majors.
But he did recognize the type of game he finished.
“It can definitely be a momentum-starter. This team's got a lot of fight,” Montgomery said. “It's going to be exciting to see where it goes.”