Rays Blast Six Home Runs, Nick Martinez Goes the Distance in 12-4 Rout
Tampa Bay hit six home runs and scored in five different innings to dismantle the Athletics 12-4 on August 12. Nick Martinez made it look easy, throwing a complete game — 9.0 innings, 8 hits, 4 earned runs, zero walks, 5 strikeouts — while his offense did everything but let him rest.
The game was effectively over before it started. Junior Caminero launched a 412-foot shot to center in the first inning, scoring Díaz, and the win probability swung from 31% to 21% right there — a gut punch the Athletics never recovered from. By the time the third inning ended, a sacrifice play turned double play had pushed the lead to 3-0, and then the fourth inning arrived and Tampa Bay simply detonated. Taylor Walls hit a 387-foot homer to right center to make it 5-0, Díaz followed with a solo shot to right at 362 feet to push it to 6-0, and even Lawrence Butler's 417-foot blast to center — which scored a run and made it 6-2 — felt like a footnote. Three home runs in one inning, and the Rays still came out of it with a four-run lead.
What followed was a slow, methodical burial. Walls added his second homer of the night in the sixth, a 379-foot drive to left center that pushed it to 7-2. Mesa Jr. went deep to center at 412 feet in the seventh to make it 9-2. Then Carson Williams — who finished 1-for-1 on the night — hit the exclamation point: a 420-foot shot to center in the eighth that scored both Palacios and Díaz and ballooned the lead to 12-2. The Athletics managed a two-run double in the ninth to close it at 12-4, but that was cosmetic.
The story of the night was the sheer volume of damage. Walls finished 2-for-4 with 2 home runs, 3 RBI, and 2 runs scored. Williams drove in 3 runs on one swing. Caminero and Mesa Jr. each went deep with multi-RBI nights. Díaz crossed the plate three times. On the other side, the Athletics cycled through three pitchers after their starter exited after two innings — and Mason Barnett's four-inning stretch of 5 hits, 5 earned runs, and 3 walks looks like the stretch that turned a competitive deficit into a laugher. Martinez, meanwhile, just kept throwing strikes. Nine innings, zero walks. That's a complete game in every sense of the word.