Tampa Bay Buries Houston 14-4 Behind Five Home Runs
Freddy Peralta threw five hitless innings and Tampa Bay's offense erupted for 14 runs, sending Houston home with a 14-4 drubbing on September 13. The Rays didn't just beat the Astros — they dismantled them before Houston managed a single run.
The game was effectively over before Houston's pitching staff could catch its breath. Victor Mesa Jr. tripled to right in the first inning, scoring Díaz and Caminero, and when Mesa Jr. came around to score on a groundout moments later, Tampa Bay was up 3-0 before the Astros had recorded three outs. That triple swung the home win probability from 66% to 79% — a 14-point lurch that set the tone for everything that followed. Ronel Blanco couldn't survive the third inning, allowing a run to score on a Houston fielding error by shortstop Peña, then watching Richie Palacios launch a 357-foot home run to right that cleared the bases and pushed the lead to 7-0. Blanco finished with 4.1 innings pitched, 5 hits, and 5 earned runs allowed.
Tampa Bay kept piling on with a methodical efficiency that looks, frankly, ruthless in hindsight. Jonathan Aranda went deep to left in the fourth (349 feet) to make it 8-0, Mesa Jr. scored again on a single to center later that inning to push it to 9-0, and Nick Fortes capped the first five innings with a 366-foot shot to left that put Tampa at 11-0. Hayden Wesneski replaced Blanco and fared only marginally better — 3.0 innings, 6 hits, 3 earned runs. Meanwhile, Peralta was untouchable: 5.0 innings, zero hits, zero earned runs, 4 strikeouts. The story of the night was a Tampa Bay offense that had answers for every arm Houston threw out there.
Houston's late-game home run barrage — Isaac Paredes (359 feet, 2 RBI) in the sixth, Nick Allen (371 feet) in the eighth, and a 439-foot blast from Velázquez in the eighth — amounted to cosmetic damage on a scoreboard that read 14-2 before the Astros got going. Aranda put the game completely out of reach in the seventh with a 415-foot two-run shot to right center, his second homer of the night, giving him 2 HR and 3 RBI on the day. Mesa Jr. finished 3-for-5 with 2 RBI and 3 runs scored. Tampa Bay's lineup top to bottom appears to have been operating at a different level entirely tonight, and Houston's pitching staff — which surrendered 14 runs across two starters — looks like it had no answers from the opening pitch.