CLEVELAND — Drew Rasmussen held the Cleveland Guardians to four hits and one walk while striking out six over seven innings Sunday evening at Progressive Field, carrying the Tampa Bay Rays to a 3-1 victory in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series and a 3-2 series lead.
The win sends the Rays home to Tropicana Field one victory away from the franchise’s third trip to the World Series. Rasmussen is now the only pitcher in Rays history with multiple postseason starts of at least seven innings with one or zero runs allowed, having accomplished the feat in two of his past three playoff outings.
Since the All-Star break, Rasmussen is 11-0 with a 1.73 ERA, 99 strikeouts and only 18 walks in 93 2/3 innings. Tampa Bay has won 14 of his 15 starts in that span, including Game 1 of the AL Division Series against the Yankees and Game 5 of the ALCS. The last pitcher in the majors to put together two postseason starts of at least seven innings with one or zero runs allowed before the World Series in a single postseason was the Giants’ Logan Webb in 2021.
Rasmussen built his lead methodically. The Rays scored one run in each of the first three innings, and Rasmussen did the rest, retiring nine batters in a row and 14 of the next 15 he faced after allowing a two-out single to Chase DeLauter in the first. Cleveland finally scratched across its only run on two singles and a groundout in the sixth.
Rasmussen returned for the seventh — the inning that ended his Game 1 outing when Patrick Bailey hit a game-tying homer — and closed it cleanly. After allowing a leadoff single to Nathaniel Lowe, Rasmussen retired Travis Bazzana and got Bailey to hit into an inning-ending double play.
The Rays return to St. Petersburg for Game 6, where a win would send them to the World Series for the third time in franchise history.