By ZAK GILBERT<\/p>\n
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez\u2019s mental mistake and fielding error cost Cleveland in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series, a day after his bat helped boost the Guardians to an opening win.<\/p>\n
He left third base uncovered on Chandler Simpson\u2019s fourth-inning infield chopper, then misplayed Ben Williamson\u2019s grounder for an error that led to three unearned runs as the Tampa Bay Rays evened the best-of-seven series with a 3-1 win Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
A seven-time All-Star who has finished among the top five in MVP voting six times, Ram\u00edrez had three hits and scored twice in Cleveland\u2019s 7-3 win in the opener.<\/p>\n
Game 2 was 0-0 with Victor Mesa Jr. on first and two outs in the fourth when Chandler Simpson beat out a high chopper to shortstop Brayan Rocchio.<\/p>\n
Ram\u00edrez, shifted toward second base on the left-handed hitter, took a few steps toward Simpson and watched the shortstop throw to first. Seeing third base uncovered, Mesa rounded second and sped to third standing up as Ram\u00edrez tried in vain to catch up.<\/p>\n
Four pitches later, Williamson hit a two-hopper that struck the edge of where the artificial turf meets the dirt near third. The ball skipped between Ram\u00edrez\u2019s legs into left, allowing Mesa to score.<\/p>\n
Liam Hicks pulled Parker Messier\u2019s next pitch, a slider, into right-center for a two-run single and a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Ram\u00edrez homered in Games 4 and 5 of the Division Series as Cleveland overcome an 0-2 series deficit, the first Cleveland player to homer in consecutive postseason games since Francisco Lindor in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By ZAK GILBERT ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez\u2019s mental mistake and fielding error cost Cleveland in Game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3820,3817,110,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-427273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427273","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=427273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}