PHOENIX -- When they left Chase Field on Wednesday night, the Rays felt like their dramatic game-winning rally in the ninth inning was the spark they needed to get back to playing their brand of baseball.
By the time they boarded their flight out of Phoenix on Thursday afternoon, they had been proven correct.
The Rays carried the previous night’s ninth-inning momentum all the way through a 6-1 victory over the D-backs in the series finale at Chase Field. Their pitching was on point. Their defense was clean. Their lineup rallied for another big inning. And by winning the last two games, Tampa Bay claimed its first series win since June 9-11 against an Arizona club leading the National League West.
“Anytime you go somewhere and win a series is huge,” said outfielder Josh Lowe, who followed up his go-ahead double on Wednesday night with a key two-run single on Thursday. “After the first game, we knew we had to bounce back. We were able to do that yesterday and then kind of carry the same energy into today.”
The way they played the last 10 innings, the Rays felt like they could ride that wave of momentum all the way to Seattle. It was a stark turnaround, considering the way the series began: with an ugly loss on Tuesday night, their sixth in nine games at that point, and eight scoreless innings to begin Wednesday’s game.
Before Thursday, the Rays hadn’t scored more than four runs in a game since June 23. They hadn’t won back-to-back games since taking three in a row from June 14-16. Now, they have reason to believe they’re getting back on track.
“It's encouraging. We've kind of set a standard here this year of scoring a lot of runs. I think, in fairness to the guys, we’ve got to have realistic expectations,” manager Kevin Cash said. “There's going to be some quiet nights every once in a while, but trust that they're putting their work in … We've got good hitters, and they're going to find ways to put runs on the board.”
Luke Raley did so right away against top D-backs pitching prospect Brandon Pfaadt, pulling a sweeper out to right field with two outs in the first inning to get the Rays on the board. But Tampa Bay's lineup was still riding high in the third, when it batted around for the 17th time this season to put up five runs.
“Just a lot of good at-bats,” Cash said. “It felt like that momentum maybe that we created from last night carried over into today's early ballgame.”
Vidal Bruján led off the third with a double down the left-field line. Yandy Díaz walked, then Wander Franco drove in both by ripping a changeup to right field for his third triple of the season. It was an encouraging sign for Franco, who had been 4-for-30 in his past eight games.
“It felt good,” Franco said through interpreter Manny Navarro, then he grinned. “Honestly, it felt real good.”
The rally continued from there, with Raley getting hit by a pitch and Harold Ramírez smacking an RBI single to center. Isaac Paredes walked to load the bases, then Lowe swatted a two-run single to center that chased Pfaadt and gave the Rays a 6-0 lead.
“That's kind of like what we showed in the ninth there last night, just kind of passing it on to the next guy, putting good at-bats together and scoring some runs,” Lowe said. “I think the rally there in the third was kind of like, 'All right, yeah, that's different from last night.' So let's just try to find that same inning tomorrow.”
One big inning was enough against the D-backs thanks to a stellar pitching performance. Right-hander Zack Littell struck out three over two scoreless innings as the opener, then Yonny Chirinos pitched into the ninth in a rebound performance as the Rays’ bulk-innings arm.
After allowing a career-high eight runs on nine hits over 5 1/3 innings on Saturday, Chirinos limited Arizona to one run on seven hits and three walks while striking out four over six-plus innings. It was the right-hander’s longest outing since 2019, before he underwent Tommy John surgery that wound up sidelining him for two years.
“It feels good,” Chirinos said through Navarro. “I think I'm getting my rhythm back. I'm getting the conditioning back of the arm and it feels good, and I feel happy that I was able to go that distance.”