'The door is still open': Rays find plenty to play for in final week

ST. PETERSBURG -- Three weeks ago, the Rays set out to defy the longshot odds ahead of them and at least make the final week of the regular season interesting. As starter Zack Littell put it on Sept. 1, they wanted to “bring it down to the last week and play meaningful baseball.”

The odds are still stacked against the Rays, and it would take a series of minor miracles for them to play beyond the coming week. But after finishing a sweep of the Blue Jays with a 4-3 win on Sunday afternoon at Tropicana Field, they’re technically not yet out of the American League Wild Card race heading into the final seven days of the regular season.

Tampa Bay is 78-78, back at .500 for the 33rd time this season. The club is four games out in the AL Wild Card race, with the Tigers, Royals, Twins and Mariners all ahead of the Rays in a battle for the last two spots.

If nothing else, that gives the Rays something to hope for as they hit the road for a season-ending trip to Detroit and Boston.

“Definitely not the year that anybody wanted or anybody had hoped for,” Brandon Lowe said. “But to be at this point in the season, to have a great homestand, to go out on the road and play against a team that's been playing incredible baseball as well, it does a lot to still be playing for something. There's still that opportunity. The door is still open.”

Sunday’s victory capped a 42-39 campaign at home for the Rays, and it gave them their first four-game winning streak since May 15-18. Tampa Bay hadn’t won or lost four straight since being swept by Baltimore from June 7-10. The Rays must win at least half of their final six games to avoid their first losing season since 2017.

They’ll have a chance at that if they can repeat the formula that delivered their first sweep of Toronto since May 21-24, 2021: great pitching and key home runs by Jonathan Aranda.

Shane Baz continued his brilliant run on the mound, holding Toronto to just one run on four hits and one walk while striking out six over six innings. The right-hander has put together a 2.25 ERA with 36 strikeouts and only 23 hits allowed in 44 innings over his past seven starts.

Baz ran into a little trouble in the fourth inning, which prompted some activity in Tampa Bay’s bullpen. But he limited the damage to just one run, rediscovered his fastball command and cruised through the sixth. Baz punctuated his seventh quality start of the season with a 98 mph fastball to Leo Jiménez, his fastest pitch of the day, to end the sixth inning with a strikeout.

“It was just fastball command and kind of nibbling a little bit, trying to be too perfect with some of the pitches,” Baz said of his fourth-inning issues. “After that, I think I just re-shifted the focus to just attacking the next guy, and yeah, it ended up working out.”

With his team down a run in the sixth, Aranda once again came through with the big swing Tampa Bay needed.

After going deep in the Rays’ 1-0 win on Friday night and launching a two-run blast in Saturday’s 3-2 victory, Aranda clubbed a go-ahead two-run blast off reliever Zach Pop to give the Rays a 2-1 lead in Sunday’s series finale.

Before starting his trot around the bases, Aranda watched his Statcast-projected 108.1 mph, 416-foot shot fly out to right-center field then briefly stared into the Rays’ dugout. He said through communications director Elvis Martinez that he knew the ball was gone off the bat, so he “just wanted to take a moment to enjoy it with my teammates.”

The only Rays player to go deep in three straight games this season, Aranda has consistently tormented the Blue Jays during his sporadic stints in the Majors. Six of his 10 career homers have come against Toronto, as have 14 of his 32 RBIs.

“Whatever he's doing, he needs to do the exact same thing every day,” Baz said. “It's impressive.”

The Blue Jays briefly tied the game in the seventh, but the Rays answered right back. Yandy Díaz led off with a pinch-hit double, and pinch-runner Jose Siri moved to third on a José Caballero single before scoring on Christopher Morel’s pinch-hit sacrifice fly to left field off lefty Génesis Cabrera.

Lowe padded the Rays' lead with a solo homer in the eighth, and that turned out to be the difference when Edwin Uceta allowed a run in the ninth. Lowe’s 20th home run of the season gave him back-to-back 20-homer campaigns and the Rays something to dream on heading into the last week of the season.

“We’re alive,” Cash said. “It's better than not being so.”