CLEVELAND - Drew Rasmussen held the Cleveland Guardians to one run on four hits over seven innings Sunday, lifting the Tampa Bay Rays to a 3-1 victory in Game 5 of the ALCS and sending them home to Tropicana Field needing just one more win to reach the World Series.
The win gives the Rays a 3-2 series lead and makes Rasmussen the first pitcher in Rays history with multiple postseason starts of seven-plus innings and one or fewer runs allowed. The last pitcher to accomplish that twice before the World Series was Logan Webb with the San Francisco Giants in 2021.
“Winning this time of year is the most important thing,” Rasmussen said. “Just doing everything you can to help your team to achieve that. It’s one of those things where every win is so much better and every loss is so much worse.”
Guardians manager Stephen Vogt, whose team managed just five hits against Rasmussen and the Rays bullpen, acknowledged the urgency facing Cleveland. “We need to rebound tomorrow,” Vogt said. “I know we’re going to have a tough matchup tomorrow. But we need to get guys on base and we need to score runs. And we just haven’t done that enough over the last two days.”
Game 6 is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET Monday at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, with Rays starter Freddy Peralta taking the mound. Peralta was dominant in his Game 2 start at The Trop, throwing six shutout innings with six strikeouts while touching 99.4 mph - the hardest fastball of his career.
For Cleveland, Vogt ruled out starting Gavin Williams, who last pitched in Game 3 and would be one day short of regular rest. Williams has been the Guardians’ postseason standout with 33 strikeouts over 16 2/3 innings. “That’s not an option,” Vogt said of a Williams start, leaving his staff to piece together a bullpen game in an elimination situation.
Closer Bryan Baker, who earned another save Sunday, credited the team’s focus heading back to Florida. “It was a huge, huge couple of games to get us back in that spot,” Baker said. “I know the first goal was just to get back to the Trop, and then to be able to go back in this position was exactly what we wanted to do. Super proud of the guys to be able to put us in this spot.”
The Rays, playing in their 29th season since entering the league in 1998, have appeared in the World Series twice before, losing to the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008 and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020. In ALCS history, teams that win Game 5 to take a 3-2 series lead go on to win the series 75 percent of the time when the format sends them home for Games 6 and 7.