The Rays scored early, and for a change they scored often, in an 11-3 thrashing of the Rangers to take a 3-1 ALCS lead. For a brief minute it looked like Texas would continue the momentum from last night's dramatic win when Dylan Carlson took a Jack Leiter pitch into the RF stands to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead, but that lasted until the next Rays at-bat. And the Rays scored 6 times in the 2nd to put their stamp on the game, as Keibert Ruiz, Ricky Widmar and Judson Fabian hit consecutive RBI singles, and then the middle of the order finally came through in this series with Nate Clark drilling a 3-run homer. And unlike previous games where they grabbed a lead and sat on it, they tacked on 2 more in the 4th and 3 in the 7th to keep the Rangers from getting any ideas of a comeback. Leiter settled down somewhat from the 1st inning but wasn't his sharpest, and left in a slightly precarious situation in the 6th with the bases loaded and the tying run on deck at 8-3. But Jordan Diaz got a fly ball to end the inning and he took the 7th as well. Mike Mooney saw his first action of the postseason with 2 innings to wrap it up, and Christian Little will look to close it out tomorrow night and get the Rays to their sixth World Series in seven seasons.
And we creep closer to a rematch of the 2024 World Series as the Dodgers take Game 5 from Arizona and need only one win in the desert to get back to the Fall Classic for the first time since that series, which had marked their third championship in five seasons. Michel Baez was solid over 6 innings and Petey Halpin hit another homer (he and fellow ex-Ray Nick Gonzales were both 2-4 with an RBI) in the 3-1 win. Former Ray Matt Manning pitched well for the Diamondbacks but strained his oblique in the game and will be unavailable to Arizona should they pull out the NLCS and make the Series.