Tyler Glasnow and three other pitchers combined for 18 strikeouts, while the batting order erupted for four homers as the Tampa Bay Rays rebounded from a Game 1 loss to beat the New York Yankees 7-5 in their American League Division Series on Tuesday.
Rays right-hander Glasnow struck out a franchise playoff-record 10 batters in five-plus innings. He gave up four runs and three hits while walking three as the Ray leveled the best of five series at 1-1.
Randy Arozarena slugged a homer for the second straight game, Mike Zunino and Manuel Margot drilled two run shots, and Austin Meadows hit a solo home run for the Rays, who equaled a club playoff record with four long balls.
Photo: AP
New York star Giancarlo Stanton homered in his fourth consecutive playoff game, including a towering 460-foot, three-run drive that cleared the upper deck in the fourth inning.
Stanton’s four straight homers, ties for the third-longest streak in a single post-season.
He now trails only Daniel Murphy, six in 2015, and Carlos Beltran, five in 2004.
In Los Angeles, George Springer hammered two home runs and Framber Valdez won the battle of the lefties as the Houston Astros moved to within one win of reaching their fourth straight AL Championship Series with a 5-2 win over the Oakland Athletics.
Left-handed starter Valdez gave up two runs on five hits over seven innings and fanned four batters for the Astros.
“With every victory, the energy and the confidence grows,” Houston manager Dusty Baker said. “We’re expecting good things to happen.”
Houston grabbed a 4-2 lead in the fifth inning on Martin Maldonado’s home run that knocked Oakland lefty Sean Manaea from the contest. Springer then smacked the first pitch from Oakland relief pitcher Yusmeiro Petit over the left-field wall.
Manaea surrendered four runs on five hits over 4-1/3 innings with one walk and two strikeouts.
The Astros belted three homers, one day after hitting three in their Game 1 victory.
Springer’s two-homer performance followed a multi-homer game from teammate Carlos Correa on Monday.
The Astros and A’s have combined for 11 home runs in both games.
In Dallas, Texas, Corey Seager scored the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly as the Los Angeles Dodgers erupted for four runs in the sixth inning en route to a 5-1 come-from-behind win over the San Diego Padres in the opening game of their National League Division Series.
Justin Turner scored two runs and walked twice, while starter Walker Buehler pitched four solid innings and struck out eight for the Dodgers.
Closer Kenley Jansen got the final out of the four-hour marathon contest by forcing Padres batter Jake Croenworth to ground out to first base at Globe Life Field.
In Houston, Travis d’Arnaud broke a seventh-inning tie with a home run as the Atlanta Braves exploded for six runs in the seventh en route to a 9-5 victory over the Miami Marlins in Game 1 of their National League series.
Dansby Swanson also hit a homer in the seventh. Ronald Acuna led off the first with a home run, while Marcell Ozuna drove in two runs with a single and a double for the second-seeded Braves, who won for the third straight time in the playoffs after sweeping the Cincinnati Reds in the first round.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier