ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Richie Palacios dropped a fly ball into shallow right in the ninth inning to score Junior Caminero and give the Tampa Bay Rays a 2-1 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay, which has three walk-off wins on its current homestand, lowered its magic number to clinch the AL East to five games. The second-place Yankees are in Arizona on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Prior to Palacios’ single, the Rays were 0 for 17 with runners in scoring position over the first two games of the series. The postseason-bound Rays, who\u2019ve won seven of their last eight, capitalized on two fortuitous bounces in the ninth.<\/p>\n
First, Caminero\u2019s foul popup bounced off the Tropicana Field catwalk and out of the reach of third baseman Caleb Durbin. Caminero then lined the next pitch from Garrett Whitlock (7-2) into left. Three batters later, after Chandler Simpson singled, Connor Wong’s passed ball moved Caminero to third.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox squandered a prime opportunity in the top of the ninth.<\/p>\n
Facing closer Bryan Baker (4-2) in a tie game, Boston got Caleb Durbin’s double and Jarren Duran’s triple. However, Nick Fortes threw out Durbin stealing third and Caminero made a stellar play at third base to retire Isiah Kiner-Falefa, stranding Duran.<\/p>\n
Boston also wasted a phenomenal effort from starter Brayan Bello, who matched a career high with 11 strikeouts. In eight innings, he allowed five hits, one run and no walks. Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman (lat tightness) was unavailable.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox took a 1-0 lead with bookend doubles from Durbin and Roman Anthony in the third inning. Trevor Story extended his hitting streak to 10 games with a sixth-inning single.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Aranda tied it with an opposite-field solo homer on the first pitch of the Rays\u2019 fourth.<\/p>\n
The Rays are an MLB-best 25-14 in one-run games.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
RHP Griffin Jax (7-10, 3.80 ERA) gets the nod for the Rays on Sunday in the series finale. Boston had not announced a starter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Richie Palacios dropped a fly ball into shallow right in the ninth inning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[3979,64,63,2755,591,44,312792,85,17599,1190],"class_list":["post-898414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-associated-press","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-florida","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-professional-baseball","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}