CLEVELAND -- It had been a back-and-forth start to the American League Championship Series, with the Guardians and Rays alternating wins in the first four games they played.
By that pattern, Game 5 was the Guardians’ turn to win. One problem: It was also Drew Rasmussen’s turn to start.
Game 1 of the ALCS was an exception to the rule in place since the All-Star break: When Rasmussen starts, the Rays win. That was the case again Sunday evening at Progressive Field.
Rasmussen held the Guardians to four hits and one walk while striking out six over seven innings as the Rays pulled out a 3-1 win in Game 5, giving them a 3-2 edge in the series and sending them home to Tropicana Field one victory away from the franchise’s third trip to the World Series.
Rasmussen has made 15 starts since his two-out relief appearance in his second All-Star Game. Tampa Bay has won 14 of those games, including Game 1 of the AL Division Series against the Yankees and Game 5 of the ALCS.
Those two outings made Rasmussen the only pitcher in franchise history with multiple postseason starts of at least seven innings with one or zero runs allowed, and he has done it in two of his past three trips to the mound.
The last pitcher in the Majors to put together two such starts before the World Series in a single postseason was the Giants’ Logan Webb in 2021.
Make no mistake: Rasmussen is not just having a postseason for the record books. He has been one of the most effective starting pitchers in baseball, when healthy, for years. If he’s still considered the most underrated pitcher in the game, as the Rays believe, it’s only because people aren’t paying enough attention.
Since the All-Star break, Rasmussen is 11-0 with a 1.73 ERA, 99 strikeouts and only 18 walks in 93 2/3 innings. The last pitcher to put together a 15-start stretch within a season, including the playoffs, that included a sub-1.75 ERA, no individual losses and no more than one team loss? Webb, who did so from May 11-Sept. 7, 2021, for a San Francisco club that won 107 games.
The Rays gave Rasmussen the gift of early run support, scoring one run in each of the first three innings, and their ace handled the rest. The right-hander permitted a two-out single to Chase DeLauter in the first inning then retired nine batters in a row and 14 of the next 15 he faced before Cleveland finally scratched across a run on two singles and a groundout in the sixth.
The Guardians hit only six balls out of the infield against Rasmussen. He allowed only three hard-hit balls all night, according to Statcast, and two of them were outs.
Rasmussen returned for the seventh inning, which didn’t work out well against the Guardians in Game 1 of this series. His outing last Monday at the Trop ended with him surrendering a game-tying homer to Patrick Bailey then walking off the mound without recording an out in the seventh.
This start had a happier ending for Rasmussen and the Rays. After allowing a leadoff single to Nathaniel Lowe, Rasmussen retired Travis Bazzana then got Bailey, perhaps appropriately, to hit into an inning-ending double play.
Rasmussen took a step off the mound, looked into Tampa Bay’s dugout on the first-base side of the field and shouted. He had done his job. At this point, what else would you expect?