ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Drew Rasmussen allowed one hit through seven innings, Cedric Mullins drove in the only run of the game on a bunt single and the Tampa Bay Rays finished off a three-game sweep of the Cleveland Guardians with a 1-0 victory on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Rasmussen (9-5) allowed a leadoff double to Steven Kwan to start the game before retiring 21 of the final 23 batters he faced, including the last 12. Rasmussen struck out nine and walked one.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay blanked its opponent for the eighth time this season, earning its second 1-0 win against Cleveland in 2026. The other was on April 28.<\/p>\n
The game finished in 1 hour, 58 minutes, the fourth game in the majors this season to be completed in under two hours.<\/p>\n
Parker Messick (8-6) allowed six hits and struck out six, allowing one run in 7 2\/3 innings for Cleveland, which has lost five consecutive games. The Guardians were limited to three runs total in the series as Tampa Bay finished the series with back-to-back shutouts. Garrett Cleavinger pitched a scoreless eighth before Bryan Baker converted his 17th consecutive save and 28th overall after striking out Brayan Rocchio with the tying run on first to end the game.<\/p>\n
The AL East-leading Rays improved to 38-15 at home this season.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay scored the only run of the game after Chandler Simpson led off the fifth with a single to left, advanced to second on a wild pitch, moved to third when Ben Williamson grounded to second then came home on Mullins’ bunt single.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Cleveland opens a series at Cincinnati on Monday with RHP Slade Cecconi (4-7, 4.60 ERA) scheduled for the Guardians against RHP Chase Burns (12-1, 2.42 ERA).<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay hosts Texas starting Tuesday with the pitching matchup TBA for both teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Drew Rasmussen allowed one hit through seven innings, Cedric Mullins drove in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2205,28,115,29645,110,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,3815],"class_list":["post-354463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-associated-press","tag-florida","tag-news","tag-professional-baseball","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-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354463","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=354463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}