Rays Jump on Rangers Early, Hang on For 5-4 Win to Get to 3 Games Over .500

TAMPA, Fla. — It probably wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been, but the Tampa Bay Rays won another game at Steinbrenner Field on Wednesday night, beating the Texas Rangers 5-4 to secure another series win.

It’s becoming a habit.

The Rays are now 11-3 in their last 14 games, and 16-8 in their last 24. At 32-29, they are three games over .500 for the first time since the first week of the season when they were 4-1 on April 2.

It was the second straight win over a Texas team that's given the Rays fits the past few years. They have won back-to-back games over the Rangers for the first time since winning three straight from Sept 17, 2022 to June 9, 2023. They are 9-1 in their last 10 home games and are 5-0-1 in their last six series. The finale is Thursday night.

Early June might be too early to start staring at the standings every morning, but with the win, the Rays are now 5.5 games behind the New York Yankees in the American League East and just a half-game out of the very crowded wild-card race.

That's just a whole lot of good stuff for a group of guys who are feeling good about themselves right now.

“I've said it all year: We have a very good baseball team,” Mangum said. “We've got a lot of guys that can help us win a ballgame any night. It's a lot of fun to play with these guys.”

The fun started early for Tampa Bay, who jumped ahead 1-0 in the first on a home run by second baseman Brandon Lowe, his 12th of the year.

They added four more runs in the third off of Texas starter Kumar Rocker, getting five hits in the inning and taking advantage of a Rocker mental error that led to the fifth run.

Josh Lowe and Brandon Lowe had back-to-back one-out doubles to make it 2-0, Yandy Diaz singled, sending Lowe to third, and then Jonathan Aranda followed with an RBI single to push the lead to 3-0. Junior Caminero grounded out for the second out, but Diaz and Aranda both moved up a base.

Mangum then beat out a well-placed infield single, beating a slow-to-react Rocker to the bag easily. Diaz scored, but Rocker wasn't looking at home as he drifted past first base. The ball was still live, so Aranda kept on running. He scored on Rucker's mental mistake, making it 5-0.

It didn't seem like it at the time, but that gift run turned out to be the game-winner.

“I got to third, and I'm always paying attention to what the play is developing into,” Aranda said. “I was in between, and when I saw that (Rocker) kept walking, and then the coach told me to go. That's why I went.”

The Rangers, who are 29-33 now and have played a lot of poor baseball all season, lost again with a bonehead play.

“(Rocker) made some mistakes,” Texas manager Bruce Bochy said “Of course, the biggest one is the fundamental of covering first base. The fundamentals got us (Wednesday). That’s a basic play and could have saved us two runs. He just forgot the situation and the other man on third and compounded the damage.

“And that’s the difference in the ballgame.”

Shane Baz started for the Rays and cruised through the first four innings, not allowing a run and just one hit. But things unraveled in the fifth, with Texas scoring three times. Jonah Heim hit a two-run homer and then Josh Smith singled and scored on a double from Wyatt Langford to cut the lead to 5-3. Baz walked Corey Seager, but then struck out Josh Jung to get out of the inning.

He threw 27 pitches in the inning, and that was enough. Rays manager Kevin Cash went to the bullpen in the sixth, and Manuel Rodriguez, Mason Montgomery, Edwin Uceta and Pete Fairbanks covered the final four innings, allowing just three hits. Texas scored an unearned in the ninth on a two-out throwing error by Brandon Lowe, but Fairbanks coaxed a groundout from Corey Seager to end the game. That was his 11th save of the season.

Baz got the win, his team-high fifth of the season, tied with Zack Littell and Drew Rasmussen. Rays pitchers had 11 strikeouts on the night — Baz had five — and it was the Rays' third straight game with double-digit strikeouts, just the second time they've done that all season. They had only three double-digit strikeout games in their previous 17.

Rays pitchers have allowed three earned runs or fewer in 12 straight games now, which ties a team record first set in 2014. They have allowed four runs or fewer in 15 straight games, tied for the second-longest streak in franchise history behind Sept. 16–Oct. 3, 2021, when they went 16 straight.