BALTIMORE (AP) \u2014 Nick Martinez pitched six innings of one-hit ball, Junior Caminero and Chandler Simpson delivered RBI singles in the pivotal sixth inning and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Baltimore Orioles 3-1 Sunday to avoid a three-game sweep.<\/p>\n
The AL East-leading Rays had lost three straight and seven of nine before bouncing back behind Martinez (13-4), who retired 18 of the 19 batters he faced. The only flaw in his brilliant performance was Colton Cowser’s third-inning double down the right-field line.<\/p>\n
Cam Booser worked a perfect seventh, Kevin Kelly got three straight outs in the eighth and Bryan Baker gave up a leadoff homer to Cowser in the ninth before sealing his 37th save.<\/p>\n
Baltimore finished with three hits and failed to draw a walk for the first time in 122 games.<\/p>\n
Martinez and former Tampa Bay starter Shane Baz were locked in a scoreless pitching duel until the sixth, when the Rays went up 3-0 after Baz got two straight outs. Yandy D\u00edaz singled, took third on a single by Jonathan Arana and scored when Baz threw a wild pitch to Caminero.<\/p>\n
Caminero then grounded a run-scoring single up the middle. Baz was lifted after walking Liam Hicks, and Simpson greeted Grant Wolfram with a single to center.<\/p>\n
Baz (4-14) gave up three runs and five hits. The hard-luck righty is 0-8 in 12 starts since June 12, in part because the Orioles have provided him only 15 runs of support in those dozen outings.<\/p>\n
It was a disappointing finish to a 2-4 homestand for Baltimore than began with three straight losses to the Yankees.<\/p>\n
The defeat blunted Baltimore’s bid to make some progress in the crowded race for the final AL wild-card spot. The Orioles started the day one game out but tied with the Twins behind three teams.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Rays right-hander Drew Rasmussen (13-5, 3.01 ERA) starts Monday night in Detroit. The Orioles have Monday off before Chris Bassitt (4-4, 5.08) starts in St. Louis on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BALTIMORE (AP) \u2014 Nick Martinez pitched six innings of one-hit ball, Junior Caminero and Chandler Simpson delivered RBI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2205,28,115,29645,110,135,3815,137,136],"class_list":["post-379430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-associated-press","tag-florida","tag-news","tag-professional-baseball","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379430","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=379430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}