D\u00edaz had three hits, including a double, and scored the first run in Sunday’s 3-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians that gave the Rays a 3-2 lead in the AL Championship Series.<\/p>\n
D\u00edaz has hits in seven of eight post-season games and is batting .314 with four doubles, a home run and an .847 OPS as the Rays’ leadoff hitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m probably a little biased, but Yandy is one of my favourite players to watch,\u201d Rays closer Bryan Baker said. \u201cWhen he gets going, we\u2019re a different team with the way he works at-bats.\u201d<\/p>\n
Game 6 is Monday at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, where the Rays are 58-27 during the regular season and playoffs. A potential Game 7 would be Tuesday in the same stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cMomentum is big in this sport and we have it \u2014 and we’re going to keep it,\u201d Tampa Bay outfielder Jonny DeLuca said. \u201cOnce bats get hot, they say it’s contagious and it’s true. It carried over from yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n
D\u00edaz went 5 for 10 in the last two games with a homer, two RBIs and three runs. The 35-year-old led the AL with 180 hits in the regular season and earned his second all-star selection. He has played in a franchise-record 33 post-season games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve said it for many seasons, as he goes, we go,\u201d Rays manager Kevin Cash said. \u201cWe talk about leaders on the team and how they go about their business. And what he does at the top of our lineup, it ignites everybody. He comes up and comes up with a big hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
D\u00edaz doubled against Parker Messick in the first and scored on DeLuca’s bases-loaded walk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m just trying to get on base as much as I can, I’m not necessarily counting the hits,\u201d D\u00edaz said. \u201cA positive mindset is the biggest thing. Just being aggressive with our pitch selection, just jumping on good pitches. Both of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"D\u00edaz had three hits, including a double, and scored the first run in Sunday’s 3-1 win over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":938427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-938426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/938427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}