Rays back to .500 after securing series win over D-backs

ST. PETERSBURG -- The Rays did enough with their legs to take an early lead Saturday afternoon, and their arms and bats took care of the rest.

Josh Lowe scored on a double steal in the first inning, another double steal set up a two-run single by Yandy Díaz in the second, and the Rays rode another all-around excellent pitching performance, led by Jeffrey Springs, to a 6-1 win at Tropicana Field.

After losing nine of 13 games, the Rays have won two in a row against a D-backs team that had won nine straight series to pull back to .500 for the MLB-leading 29th time this season. They are still 6 1/2 games behind the Royals for the final American League Wild Card spot.

“We feel like we have a good amount of team speed, and it can really help us score some runs,” said Kevin Cash, who became the sixth active manager with at least 800 career wins. “We know Zac Gallen is a really talented pitcher. … You've got to take every opportunity that you can get.”

Brandon Lowe walked and Josh Lowe tripled off Gallen to get the Rays on the board in the first inning. Junior Caminero worked a two-out walk, putting runners on the corners. Caminero then took off for second, and Josh Lowe perfectly executed the delayed double steal to give Tampa Bay a 2-0 lead.

That wasn’t a planned play by the Rays, either. Lowe said he noticed third baseman Eugenio Suárez was far off the bag, allowing him to get a big lead, and third base coach Brady Williams told him he had a good chance to score if he timed it right.

“Then when he went, I went,” Lowe said. “I think that play, it kind of just depends on the situation, and the situation was right.”

It was the 16th time in franchise history, including the postseason, that the Rays stole home -- and the first instance since Jose Siri did so on May 2, 2023. It also gave Lowe a stolen base in six straight games; he’s the second player in franchise history to accomplish that feat, joining Carl Crawford, who swiped at least one base in nine straight games from April 28-May 6, 2009.

“Josh is pretty savvy over there. His base-stealing is pretty elite throughout baseball,” Cash said. “He gets good reads and good jumps, and with his speed, he's going to score more times than not.”

The Rays hit and ran their way to two more runs in the second. Taylor Walls and Alex Jackson slapped back-to-back one-out hits off Gallen, then they pulled off another double steal, which included the first stolen base of Jackson’s career. That set up a two-run single by Díaz, who smacked Gallen’s full-count fastball to right field.

That proved to be plenty of run support for Springs, who picked up his first win since April 8, 2023, in his fourth start back from Tommy John surgery. Despite pitching with diminished velocity, the lefty held the D-backs to one run on four hits and a walk while striking out seven over five innings.

“Definitely a lot of work left to be done, but I feel like I'm finally going in the right direction with everything from the mechanics, with execution,” Springs said. “Getting back to moving the ball around, mixing pitches, kind of what I have to do to be successful.”

The Rays tacked on two more runs in the sixth, when Díaz hit a two-out ground-rule double and Brandon Lowe skied his 15th home run of the season down the right-field line. But that wasn’t even his most noteworthy high fly ball of the game.

In the second inning, Lowe launched a ball that landed on the B-ring catwalk and was thus ruled a ground-rule double.

In a bizarre coincidence, Cash said umpire Tony Randazzo asked him Friday what would happen if a ball got stuck on that catwalk. Cash said he responded, “You know what? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that in 10 years, where it actually stays.”

“And then,” Cash said, “it happens the next day.”

It was indeed a rare occurrence. That was believed to be only the third time in Tropicana Field history that a ball hit the B-ring and didn’t come down, joining two hit by Carlos Peña (May 26, 2008) and José Canseco (May 2, 1999).

“I was willing it to kind of get over the ring there and keep going. But as soon as it hit up there, I was watching it, I was like, 'Oh God, please stay up there,’” Lowe said. “I know it's a live ball, so, I mean, if that comes down, it's probably getting caught.

“Didn't have to worry about it. It stayed up there.”