ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Yandy Diaz and Ryan Vilade homered in the first inning and five pitchers combined for a four-hitter as the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Texas Rangers 3-0 on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Ian Seymour (7-3) allowed just two hits in 4 2\/3 innings of bulk relief behind opener Casey Legumina, who allowed one hit in 1 2\/3 innings. Garret Cleavinger pitched out of a seventh-inning jam, and Kevin Kelly struck out the side in the eighth.<\/p>\n
Bryan Baker converted his 19th consecutive save and 29th overall with a scoreless final inning to close out the ninth shutout this season for AL East-leading Tampa Bay. It was the Rays’ third shutout in four games.<\/p>\n
Texas starter MacKenzie Gore (6-9) allowed three hits and struck out nine in seven innings, retiring 20 of the final 21 batters he faced. The Rangers held the Rays without a hit for the final 7 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay jumped on Gore in the first inning as Diaz led off with a 372-foot, opposite-field shot to right. Jonathan Aranda followed with a double before Vilade hit a two-run homer with one out that struck the \u201cD\u201d Ring in left field.<\/p>\n
Seymour allowed a one-out double in the third before retiring 10 consecutive batters.<\/p>\n
Texas put runners on first and second with one out in the seventh after a double by Jake Burger and walk to Nicky Lopez. But Cleavinger struck out Cam Cauley before Alejandro Osuna bounced out in front of the plate to end the threat.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Rays LHP Shane McClanahan (9-6, 3.09 ERA) is scheduled to start the series finale on Thursday against Rangers RHP Cole Winn (5-3, 6.11).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Yandy Diaz and Ryan Vilade homered in the first inning and five pitchers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358572,"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-358571","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\/358571","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=358571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}