CLEVELAND — Junior Caminero was sure the ball was gone. The Tampa Bay Rays slugger thought his fourth-inning drive would leave the park “100 percent,” Yahoo Sports reported. Cleveland center fielder Petey Halpin caught it.
The ball left Caminero’s bat at 110.7 mph and a 29-degree launch angle, and Yahoo Sports noted that similar combinations have produced only home runs since Statcast tracking began in 2015. Halpin backpedaled, briefly appeared to lose track of it, then made a falling catch just in front of the deepest part of the wall as the sellout crowd of 33,355 at Progressive Field went wild for the Cleveland Guardians. Rays reliever Tyler Wells, whose view from the bullpen was somewhat obscured, said he was “really confused” when he saw everyone cheering. “Did this guy scale up half the wall? Did he pull a Spider-Man?” Wells said he wondered.
The Rays won anyway, 7-3, to tie the American League Championship Series at two games apiece. Caminero, Jonathan Aranda and Yandy Díaz had hit .147 with one RBI through the first three games, Fox Sports reported. On Saturday the three combined for six hits and five RBIs.
Tampa Bay had been 0-10 in its previous 10 postseason games in which it trailed at any point, a run that dates to 2020, CBS Sports reported. Chase DeLauter’s RBI single put Cleveland up 1-0 in the first inning, and Aranda tied it in the third.
Caminero’s own answer came in the sixth. With the game tied 1-1, he lined a 97.9 mph fastball from Daniel Espino into left field for a double that scored Aranda and made it 2-1, Yahoo Sports reported. Rays manager Kevin Cash had said before the game that Caminero would “find a way to get his name in the paper in the best possible way,” and afterward said he was “just happy that Junior squared some balls up.”
The Rays broke it open in the seventh. Fox Sports said Aranda’s single to right got under DeLauter’s glove, two runs scored on the play and a sacrifice fly made it 5-1. The misplay echoed ALCS Game 2, when all three Tampa Bay runs followed a ground ball that got past José Ramírez.
Díaz put it away with a two-run homer in the ninth, making it 7-3. Game 5 comes Sunday on what had been a travel day, CBS Sports noted, because of Friday’s Guardians-Rays rainout.
By Statcast’s projection, Caminero’s ball would have carried 410 feet, tied for the farthest batted ball caught for an out at Progressive Field in the Statcast era, Yahoo Sports said. First pitch came at 46 degrees, the coldest for a postseason game since Game 1 of the 2019 NLCS. Cash said the ballpark can be tricky on cold nights. “Didn’t look like there was a ton of wind,” he said, “but that cool air can knock it down a little bit.”
