ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The Tampa Bay Rays are one win away from reaching the World Series for the third time in franchise history.<\/p>\n
They took down the Cleveland Guardians in Game 5 of the American League Division Series 3-1 to take a 3-2 series lead. The Rays struck early, scoring a run in each of the first three innings and never trailed the rest of the way thanks to more superb pitching.<\/p>\n
Drew Rasmussen went seven innings of four-hit ball, allowing just one run and striking out six. His only blemish was a seventh inning RBI groundout from Guardians’ Chase DeLauter, but he found his way out of that jam one batter later.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay scored in the first inning via a Jonny DeLuca walk. Jonathan Aranda drove in a run with an RBI single in the second.<\/p>\n
Liam Hicks followed suit in the third with one of his own, giving the Rays an early 3-0 advantage.<\/p>\n
Game 6 is scheduled for 8 p.m. EST on Monday in St. Petersburg on TBS.<\/p>\n
If the Guardians stay alive and win, the two teams will run it back for Game 7 on Tuesday, same time and place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The Tampa Bay Rays are one win away from reaching the World Series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3816,117991,169335,109161,5829,169338,84504,28,77435,84503,90635,169336,96271,169337,199,135,3815,137,136,169339,78290],"class_list":["post-431690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-players","tag-boston-red-sox-players","tag-chase-delauter","tag-cleveland","tag-dan-wheeler","tag-drew-rasmussen","tag-florida","tag-grapefruit-league","tag-jonathan-aranda","tag-jonny-deluca","tag-kansas-city-royals-players","tag-liam-hicks","tag-major-league-baseball-expansion-draft","tag-st-petersburg","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-the-world-series","tag-world-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431690","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=431690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}