*Photo from the Citrus County Chronicle*
One team is heating up, the other is cooling off. Leody Taveras homered, Jonah Heim added a homer, and the Texas Rangers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays with a 5-1 victory on Wednesday afternoon in Arlington.
The Rangers are the ones that are heating up, having won 6 straight games and 7 of 10 as they improved to 58-39 with a sweep of the Rays at home. They're also two games behind the Rays in the win column for the most wins in the AL.
Meanwhile, the Rays are ice cold and in the middle of a slump. They've lost 4 in a row, are 3-7 in their last 10, and are just 3-11 since the calendar flipped to July. Now, the Rays lost their lead on the AL East, now sitting in second place to the Baltimore Orioles.
Rays outfielder Randy Arozarena said of the skid that "We have to just keep on going, keep on trying, keep on battling and not change a thing. At the beginning of the year, we were doing the same thing as we're doing now. We were just getting different results. The last few games haven't really gone our way, but we can't give up now. We still have to go the rest of the season. There's 162 games."
After the first two innings were scoreless, Taveras took control in the 3rd inning. He gave the Rangers a 1-0 lead with a solo home run to right field, his 11th home run of the season. It stayed 1-0 until the 7th inning. Taveras then drove in another run, doubling the Rangers lead to 2-0 with an RBI single that scored Travis Jankowski.
Come the 8th inning, Heim broke the game open for the Rangers. With two runners on base, Heim cranked a 3 run home run to right field, opening the lead to 5-0 for the Rangers. In the 9th, Jose Siri ended the shutout bid by the Rangers, hitting a solo home run to left field to make the score 5-1, which went final.
Jon Gray pitched 4 1/3 scoreless innings for the Rangers before giving way to Brock Burke, who pitched two scoreless innings to get the win. Alex Speas pitched 1 2/3 innings in his MLB debut before Cody Bradford closed out the win in the 9th.
The big story for the Rangers was Speas. A former second round pick, Speas retired in 2021 to focus on his mental health and his family. Last year, he was coaching youth baseball. He returned to the pros in spring training this year, and entered a big situation and delivered in his first MLB game.
Speas said after the game that "A lot of things that came at once and led me into a year of just taking it off. I wasn't myself on a baseball field. So it was hard to do. I wanted to be out helping this team and organization win, but that was the best thing for me to do at the time. A year later after coaching and being around younger athletes and players and just seeing the joy for the game, it got me back to this point."
Zack Littell got the start for the Rays, allowing one run in 3 1/3 innings as an opener. Jake Diekman finished the 4th before Shawn Armstrong pitched two scoreless innings. Calvin Faucher allowed one run and Kevin Kelly allowed 3 in one inning of work each.
The Rangers take on the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday at home, with Andrew Heaney getting the start to open the series. The Rays give the start to Tyler Glasnow on Thursday as they face the Orioles in Baltimore.
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