ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Drew Rasmussen struck out a career-high 13 and two-hit the Boston Red Sox over seven scoreless innings, leading the Tampa Bay Rays to a 7-5 victory Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Nick Fortes, Yandy D\u00edaz and Taylor Walls had multiple hits for the Rays, who swept the Red Sox for the first time since 2023.<\/p>\n
Rasmussen (6-2) fanned his first four hitters, faced the minimum through four innings and didn’t allow a runner to reach third base. Boston’s 1-4 batters were a combined 0 for 11 with 11 strikeouts against the Tampa Bay righty, who left with a 5-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Boston then jumped on the Rays’ bullpen with a four-run eighth, including Ceddanne Rafaela’s three-run homer. Caleb Durbin also homered in the frame to put the Red Sox on the board.<\/p>\n
But Fortes answered with his fourth hit, matching a career high, and Cedric Mullins hit a two-run homer off Boston reliever Justin Slaten. Garrett Cleavinger pitched the ninth for his second save, despite surrendering another homer to Durbin.<\/p>\n
The small-ball Rays scored in the third when Fortes doubled off the wall, Mullins’ sacrifice bunt moved Fortes to third and Taylor Walls scored him on a sacrifice fly.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay used three infield hits \u2014 including an Austin Slater RBI double off the leg of Boston starter Jake Bennett (1-2) \u2014 to score three in the fifth.<\/p>\n
D\u00edaz, who had three hits and two RBIs, extended the longest on-base streak in the majors to 24 games.<\/p>\n
The Rays are 12-0 against the AL East at Tropicana Field, the majors’ longest season-opening home streak against division opponents since 2009.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Boston returns home to face Texas on Friday with RHP Sonny Gray (7-1, 3.20 ERA) on the mound.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay begins a road trip against the Angels on Friday with LHP Shane McLanahan (6-3, 2.85) scheduled to start. Neither Texas nor Los Angeles has announced a starter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Drew Rasmussen struck out a career-high 13 and two-hit the Boston Red Sox…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[12202,12204,12201,12203,127106,127105,110,202,204,203,199,201,200,127502],"class_list":["post-304147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-around-maine","tag-app-in-the-community","tag-around-maine-more-maine-news","tag-maine","tag-publish-to-facebook-me","tag-publish-to-x-threads-me","tag-sports","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-zak-gilbert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}