Brandon Lowe and Tommy Pham hit solo home runs to help lift the Tampa Bay Rays to a 6-5 win against the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday, earning a split of the four-game series in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Pham hit his 10th home run of the season in the fifth inning to break a 3-3 tie.
The Rays tacked on two more runs in the eighth on an RBI single by Yandy Diaz and a wild pitch, important runs after Mike Trout hit a two-run homer in the ninth to cut the deficit to 6-5. Lowe and Diaz each had two hits and an RBI.
Trout, Brian Goodwin and Shohei Ohtani had two hits each, and David Fletcher drove in two runs for Los Angeles, which has lost its past seven attempts at getting back to .500, going back to mid-April.
Angels rookie right-hander Griffin Canning (2-3) went six innings, allowing four runs and six hits. He struck out seven and didn't walk a batter for the second straight start.
Tommy La Stella returned to the Angels lineup after missing the past two games with tightness in his left arm and led off the game by reaching on an error by first baseman Ji-Man Choi. The Angels went on to load the bases with no outs, but only got a sacrifice fly by Albert Pujols in the inning.
After striking out the first two batters in the bottom of the inning, Canning surrendered a solo homer to Lowe to tie the score at 1-1.
Tampa Bay tacked on two more runs in the second when Kevin Kiermaier tripled home Diaz and then scored on pop out that Pujols caught on the move in foul territory to make it 3-1.
Fletcher drove in the next two runs for the Angels with a sacrifice fly in the third inning and an infield single in the fifth, tying the score at 3-3. Both runs were charged to reliever Jalen Beeks.
Emilio Pagan, Colin Poche (1-1) and Adam Kolarek combined to blank the Angels until the ninth, when Trout hit his two-run homer off Diego Castillo, who struck out Kole Calhoun with the tying run at second to record his seventh save.
--Field Level Media
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