DUNEDIN, Fla. — The Rays had to work overtime Monday to extend their winning streak to 11 games, letting two multi-run leads get away before rallying for seven runs in the 11th to beat the Blue Jays, 14-8.
The Rays scored five in the first, then saw the Jays tie by the eighth. The Rays scored two in the top of the 10th, but saw the Jays pull even again.
Then the Rays scored seven in the 11th.
Starting with a runner on second under the current extra-inning rules, the Rays loaded the bases when rookie Taylor Walls drew a walk and Joey Wendle, who had a first-inning grand slam, blooped a single.
Then Francisco Mejia, who had big hits in the Friday and Sunday wins, came through again, lacing a two-run single. The Rays added two more runs on a Randy Arozarena double and an Austin Meadows ground out, then two on a Manuel Margot triple and a Mike Brosseau single.
The Jays got one run back in the bottom of the 11th when Teoscar Hernandez scored on Santiago Espinal’s groundout before Andrew Kittredge closed them out.
The Rays have only one longer winning streak in franchise history, when Lou Piniella’s 2004 team won 12 straight on the way to a then-franchise-best 70 victories.
With Monday’s win, the Rays improved to an American League-best 30-19 and took a half-game division lead over the Red Sox.
The Rays took a 7-5 lead in the 10th. Meadows doubled in Brett Phillips, the pinch-runner who started the inning on second base under the extra-inning rules. Margot then ripped a two-out single to score Arozarena, who had walked with one out.
The Jays came back to tie it, Marcus Semien hitting a two-run homer off Jeffrey Springs.
The Rays, who took a 5-0 lead in the first thanks mostly to Wendle’s grand slam, carried a 5-3 advantage into the eighth. But after Ryan Yarbrough gave the Rays six solid innings and looked to be in line to break his 22-start winless streak, the bullpen let the lead get away.
Collin McHugh, after allowing two singles in the seventh, gave up a leadoff triple in the eighth to Rowdy Tellez, whose drive to right-center hit high off the wall, just out of the reach of leaping centerfielder Kevin Kiermaier, and caromed back toward the infield.
McHugh struck out the next two, Semien and Bo Bichette. Manager Kevin Cash then summoned Ryan Thompson to face Vlad Guerrero Jr., and that turned out to be a bad move.
Guerrero, who launched a massive 461-foot homer off Yarbrough, laced Thompson’s 2-2 slider a meager 384 feet over the centerfield fence to tie the score 5-5.
The Rays got their first run on a bases-loaded walk, then their next four on a grand slam by Wendle, once again giving Cash reason to call him the Big Bopper.
The Jays had planned to start Ross Stripling, then announced Monday morning they would instead use Trent Thornton as the opener. The Rays had already set their lineup but made a slight adjustment, moving Brandon Lowe up to third and Margot down to fourth.
Arozarena started the game with a first-pitch single and stole second. With two outs, Margot hit a sharp grounder that third baseman Espinal booted.
That led to more trouble, as Thornton walked Ji-Man Choi — who would later leave the game with soreness in his surgically repaired right knee — to load the bases.
Walls, in his third game, then drew a walk to force in a run. Wendle laced an opposite-field liner over the leftfield wall to score four more. Stripling, by the way, came on in the second and worked seven shutout innings.
Yarbrough has pitched much better behind an opener, but with their bullpen taxed from heavy use in recent days, the Rays opted to give the lefty a start.
He got them through six innings with the lead, though he did allow three home runs. One somewhat pedestrian one to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in the second, then back-to-back massive blasts by Guerrero (461 feet at 117 mph) and Hernandez (457, 108) in the fourth.
The game was the last of 21 the Jays played in TD Ballpark as their temporary regular-season home; they will shift their base to Buffalo, N.Y. starting with their next homestand.
