By now, every baseball fan has heard of remarkable rookie Randy Arozarena. They quickly are becoming familiar with his World Series-bound Tampa Bay teammates, too.
“You sit here and look at this group of guys, and I always say we don’t have a lot of household names. But at the same time, people are making a name for themselves right now,” outfielder Kevin Kiermaier said.
They kept doing that in Game 7 of the AL Championship Series on Saturday night.
Arozarena homered again, 36-year-old Charlie Morton was brilliant against his former team and the Rays silenced the Houston Astros, 4-2, to reach the World Series for just the second time.
Right fielder Manuel Margot squeezed Aledmys Diaz’s flyball in his glove for the final out, and fireworks burst overhead as the Rays began to celebrate the AL pennant in an NL ballpark, a byproduct of the pandemic-shortened season.
“If you don’t know the name by now, they better learn them, because we’ve we got some boys who can play,” said Kiermaier, the Rays’ longest-tenured player.
That would start with Arozarena, who set a rookie record with his seventh home run — a two-run shot in the first — and was chosen ALCS MVP.
“Randy Arozarena, I don’t have any words to describe what he’s done, what he’s meant to us this postseason,” manager Kevin Cash said. “For him to have a bat in his hand with an opportunity for a big home run, really, I think it settled a lot of people in the dugout. It certainly did me.”
Arozarena, a relative unknown before the postseason, has brought power and some serious dance moves to the Rays.
“I wouldn’t say I was chasing MVP, but I was just trying to do everything for the team, anything to allow us to win,” the 25-year-old left fielder said through a translator.
Until he started showing his October power, Arozarena was known best for a gaffe he committed while with the St. Louis Cardinals last postseason. After the Cardinals beat Atlanta in the NL Division Series, he posted manager Mike Schildt’s profane clubhouse rant to social media, not realizing it would get a negative reaction.
Morton held the Astros to two hits in 5 2/3 scoreless innings while striking out six and walking one.
He is the first major leaguer to earn the victory in four winner-take-all games, including Game 7 of the 2017 World Series and Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS against the Yankees when he was with Houston. He signed with Tampa Bay as a free agent before the 2019 season and won the wild card game at Oakland last year. The Rays then were eliminated by the Astros in the ALDS.
Arozarena is only one homer away from matching the major league record of eight homers in a postseason. Barry Bonds set the mark for San Francisco in 2002, and it was tied by Houston’s Carlos Beltran in 2004 and Texas’ Nelson Cruz in 2011.
