NEW YORK -- Since May 20, who has the best record in the Major Leagues? No, it’s not the Mets, Dodgers or Yankees. It’s the Rays. By pounding the Mets, 8-4, at Citi Field on Saturday, Tampa Bay has won 17 of its last 23 games.
In those 23 games, the Rays have scored six or more runs nine times. That is tied for the most such games in the Majors over that span. In fact, Tampa Bay’s offense has proven to be the difference against New York thus far. Like on Friday, the Rays fell behind early -- this time by a score of 2-1 after three innings -- but they made right-hander Tylor Megill throw 37 pitches in the top of the fourth as they scored five runs.
Junior Caminero led off the big frame and tied the game at 2 with a homer, which broke an 0-for-17 skid. It helped that his father, Juan, was in attendance to see his son perform in the batter’s box. Prior to Saturday, it was Juan who told his son, “Tomorrow is another day when things don't go your way.”
“I want to put the ball in play,” Caminero said through interpreter Eddie Rodriguez. “I’ve been in a bad funk, but thank God I was able to hit the ball today. Tomorrow is Father's Day. Yes, my father is here. Hopefully, I’ll be able to have a good game tomorrow. But we won the series. That’s what matters.”
Tampa Bay did more than just use the long ball that inning. The team used its brand of small ball. By the time the inning ended, Tampa Bay had batted around and scored four more runs on three singles, a safety squeeze, an error, two walks, a hit-by-pitch and a wild pitch by Megill.
It marked the third time this season the Rays have sent 11 or more batters to the plate in an inning, and they scored five or more runs in an inning for the eighth time this season and in consecutive games for the first time.
“The hits that followed, we were finding not the big blast, but a bunch of base hits, moving runners and getting good jumps on the bases,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “When we get our speed involved, [the offense] can be pretty tough to defend. It felt like the guys we had on base, there was a lot of traffic.”
The Rays added to their lead in the next two innings against left-hander José Castillo. In the fifth, Matt Thaiss scored on a double by Taylor Walls, while Brandon Lowe scored all the way from first on a triple by Yandy Díaz in the sixth.
The offense did enough for Drew Rasmussen to win his sixth game of the season. He wasn’t at his best as he allowed four runs in five innings.
“To get picked up by our offense is great. The way we can win games -- we can do it with power, speed and play some small ball,” Rasmussen said. “We drive in runs at a pretty good clip. It’s great to be in the dugout when things are rolling like that.”
For Lowe, he is not surprised that the Rays have been baseball’s best for almost a month. It’s not hard to figure out, he said.
“Everyone is trying to figure out why [we are the best]. We are just playing good baseball on pretty much all fronts,” Lowe said. “We made some errors in some games. That has come back to haunt us, but we haven’t let that beat us.
“Our pitching staff is being a Rays pitching staff where [it] has been fantastic for us. … We are not going to sit there and wait for one thing to help us win. We are going to find multiple different ways to get up there to push some runs across.”