ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Rays flexed the muscle of their majors-leading offense Saturday, blasting a team-record-tying six home runs in an 11-4 victory against the Twins.
More impressively, the six homers came from six different hitters, a team record. Yandy Diaz and Jordan Luplow went deep in the second, Manuel Margot and Randy Arozarena in the third, and Nelson Cruz and Brandon Lowe in the fourth.
The win improved the Rays’ American League-best record to 86-50 and increased their East Division lead to 7 1/2 games over the Yankees, who lost for the sixth time this season to the last-place Orioles.
Arozarena had the biggest day, as he tripled and singled in his first two at-bats, giving him two more shots after the homer to hit a double and join B.J. Upton (2009) and Evan Longoria (2017) as the only Rays to hit for a cycle.
With much of the Tropicana Field crowd of 13,861 chanting “Randy, Randy, Randy” as he came to the plate, Arozarena was hit by a pitch in the fifth and struck out in the seventh.
Lowe hit his team-leading 32nd home run of the season, doing it on his bobblehead day, while Cruz delivered the 444th of his career, ranking 42nd all time (with Jeff Bagwell and Vlad Guerrero in front of him at 449).
Starter Chris Archer worked five innings for the win, his first in the majors since June 6, 2019, with the Pirates, and his first for the Rays since May 17, 2018, 2 1/2 months before he was traded to Pittsburgh.
Though leading the majors with 717 runs scored and a 5.31 per-game average, the Rays had been quiet of late, scoring just seven total over their previous three games (two, zero, five). Plus, they hadn’t hit a home run since the third inning Wednesday against the Red Sox, going 24 innings over parts of four games until their first on Saturday, Diaz’s three-run shot in the second.
Wander Franco returned to the Rays lineup and had an RBI single in the first, extending his on-base streak to 34 games, third longest in major league history for a player age 20 or younger and the longest such single-season streak in American League play.
