Game 2: Rays 6, Dodgers 4 Wednesday, Oct. 21
The Rays’ offense, in a deep freeze, thawed with their greatest offensive output in a week.
The Rays won their first World Series game in 4,381 days, dating to Oct. 23, 2008.
This is a team that entered the game hitting .190 since the start of the American League Championship Series. The Rays had gone five consecutive games without scoring more than four runs. They had set a postseason record hitting .230 or lower in 10 consecutive games.
But in this game, they got their swagger back, with 10 hits by eight players, and scoring runs off four pitchers.
Brandon Lowe was hitting .107 until his twohomer night. Lowe, the Rays’ MVP of the regular season, got one hit in his first 36 at-bats of the postseason. Lowe’s struggles were intensifying by the game. He didn’t even hit the ball out of the infield in Game 1. He was on a 4for-52 skid (.077) with 19 strikeouts in 15 games, before homering off Tony Gonsolin in the first inning.
In the fifth inning, with Dustin May, the Dodgers’ fourth pitcher, on the mound, he fouled off May’s 97-mph fastball. He was fooled, swinging and missing on May’s curveball. May came back with another 86-mph curveball, Lowe swung, and sent it over the left-field wall for a two-run shot. May looked up and screamed.
He became only the second American League second baseman to hit two homers in a game, last done by Tony Lazzeri of the 1932 New York Yankees, and the sixth second baseman overall. Quotable: “It was definitely a confidence boost. When my confidence was wavering, when I wasn’t feeling too good mentally, he was right there. He’d say, ‘You’re going to get two hits today. You’re going to do something to change the game.’ ”
— Lowe on manager Kevin Cash’s confidence in him.