{"id":133253,"date":"2025-06-26T20:53:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T20:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/133253\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T20:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T20:53:10","slug":"rays-complete-sweep-of-royals-reach-midpoint-of-season-at-46-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/133253\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays complete sweep of Royals, reach midpoint of season at 46-35"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article__body-float article__body-float-left\">KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 The Rays reached the halfway point of their season on Thursday with a 4-0 victory over the Royals that completed a three-game sweep.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body-float article__body-float-left\">Shane Baz delivered a dominant start, and the Rays offense again showed its versatility, getting two runs with a two-out, three-hit rally in the fourth and two more on back-to-back homers in the sixth by Brandon Lowe and Junior Caminero.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body-float article__body-float-left\">The win moved the Rays to a season-high 11 games over .500 at 46-35, improving their majors-best record since May 9 to 30-14 and since May 20 to 25-9. On May 19, they were a season-most five games under .500 at 21-26.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body-float article__body-float-left\">The Rays also moved to within one-half game of the American League East-leading Yankees, who were off Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Baz was dazzling, allowing a leadoff double to Jonathan India, then nothing else through the next five-plus innings, retiring 19 straight, before allowing back-to-back singles in the seventh and then getting a double-play grounder to end the inning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">For the afternoon, Baz worked a career-high eight innings, allowing three hits, walking one and striking out nine. <\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The Rays took a 2-0 lead in the fourth with a two-out rally.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">All-Star candidate Jonathan Aranda doubled, then Jake Mangum followed with an RBI triple. Josh Lowe\u2019s single made it 2-0.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">They had a chance to add on when rookie Chandler Simpson tripled with one out in the fifth, but Simpson was picked off third.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The Rays then turned on the power in the sixth, with back-to-back homers by their top top sluggers \u2014 Brandon Lowe hitting his 16th, and Caminero his 20th.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body-align article__body-align-center\">\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/newsletters\/sports-today\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Sign up for our Sports Today newsletter<\/a> to get daily updates on the Bucs, Rays, Lightning and college football across Florida.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Every weekday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/podcasts\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/podcasts\/\">tune into our Sports Day Tampa Bay podcast<\/a> to hear reporter Rick Stroud break down the biggest stories in Tampa Bay sports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Never miss out on the latest with your favorite Tampa Bay sports teams. Follow our coverage on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TBTimes_Sports\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">X<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TampaBayTimesSports\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 The Rays reached the halfway point of their season on Thursday with a 4-0&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,4,297,19476,19475,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":{"0":"post-133253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-rays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-rays","11":"tag-section-rays","12":"tag-section-sports","13":"tag-tampa-bay","14":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","15":"tag-tampabay","16":"tag-tampabayrays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114751655483741137","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}