{"id":762185,"date":"2026-07-26T19:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T19:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/762185\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T19:39:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T19:39:17","slug":"drew-rasmussen-outduels-park-messick-as-tampa-bay-rays-beat-cleveland-guardians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/762185\/","title":{"rendered":"Drew Rasmussen outduels Park Messick as Tampa Bay Rays beat Cleveland Guardians"},"content":{"rendered":"

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Drew Rasmussen<\/a> allowed one hit through seven innings, Cedric Mullins<\/a> drove in the only run of the game on a bunt single and the Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> finished off a three-game sweep of the Cleveland Guardians<\/a> with a 1-0 victory on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Rasmussen (9-5) allowed a leadoff double to Steven Kwan<\/a> to start the game before retiring 21 of the final 23 batters he faced, including the last 12. Rasmussen struck out nine and walked one.<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay blanked its opponent for the eighth time this season, earning its second 1-0 win against Cleveland in 2026. The other was on April 28.<\/p>\n

The game finished in 1 hour, 58 minutes, the fourth game in the majors this season to be completed in under two hours.<\/p>\n

Parker Messick<\/a> (8-6) allowed six hits and struck out six, allowing one run in 7 2\/3 innings for Cleveland, which has lost five consecutive games. The Guardians were limited to three runs total in the series as Tampa Bay finished the series with back-to-back shutouts. Garrett Cleavinger<\/a> pitched a scoreless eighth before Bryan Baker<\/a> converted his 17th consecutive save and 28th overall after striking out Brayan Rocchio<\/a> with the tying run on first to end the game.<\/p>\n

The AL East-leading Rays improved to 38-15 at home this season.<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay scored the only run of the game after Chandler Simpson<\/a> led off the fifth with a single to left, advanced to second on a wild pitch, moved to third when Ben Williamson<\/a> grounded to second then came home on Mullins\u2019 bunt single.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

Cleveland opens a series at Cincinnati on Monday with RHP Slade Cecconi<\/a> (4-7, 4.60 ERA) scheduled for the Guardians against RHP Chase Burns<\/a> (12-1, 2.42 ERA).<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay hosts Texas starting Tuesday with the pitching matchup TBA for both teams.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/p>\n

Erik Erlendsson, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Drew Rasmussen allowed one hit through seven innings, Cedric Mullins drove in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,2565,538,4,185],"class_list":["post-762185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-guardians","tag-baseball","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-clevelandguardians","tag-guardians","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116987976961063002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762185","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=762185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}