Rays rally late, walk off Astros on Taylor Walls’ sac fly

Jonathan Aranda had a two-run single in the eighth inning and Taylor Walls had a sacrifice fly in the ninth as the host Tampa Bay Rays earned a 3-2 walk-off victory over the Houston Astros on Tuesday night.
After inducing a double-play ball to end the eighth inning, Houston’s Kaleb Ort (1-1) ran into trouble in the ninth. Christopher Morel walked to lead off the inning and advanced to third base on Brandon Lowe’s pinch-hit double to left field. Morel scored two batters later on Walls’ fly ball to left field.
The late uprising made a winner out of Manuel Rodriguez (1-2), who allowed one hit and struck out one batter in one scoreless inning of relief.
Ort yielded one run on one hit in 1 1/3 innings as the Astros saw their modest two-game winning streak come to a halt.
Isaac Paredes, who played parts of three seasons for Tampa Bay, belted a solo homer in the third inning for the Astros. Jake Meyers had an RBI double in the second and joined Victor Caratini and Jose Altuve with two hits.
Caratini doubled off Zack Littell to lead off the second inning and came around to score the game’s first run after Meyers’ blast caromed off the wall in center field.
Paredes doubled Houston’s advantage in the third inning, capping a nine-pitch at-bat by depositing a 2-2 fastball from Littell over the left-field wall. The homer was Paredes’ team-leading eighth of the season and fourth in his last eight games.
The two-run advantage held up until the eighth inning, when Steven Okert allowed the first two batters to reach before Aranda singled to right field to plate both Kameron Misner and Jose Caballero.
Houston’s Brandon Walter allowed three hits over five scoreless innings in his first major league start. After appearing in nine games with the Red Sox in 2023, he was signed to a minor league deal last August and was called up from Triple-A Sugar Land on Tuesday.