Tampa Bay Rays, Red Sox Head to Baseball's ALCS
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}B.J. Upton and these Tampa Bay Rays are headed home — to get ready for the American League championship series.
Worst in the majors last year, the Rays will play for a spot in the World Series after finishing off the Chicago White Sox 6-2 Monday in Game 4 of the AL playoffs.
Ray-markable!
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Upton homered twice, Andy Sonnanstine pitched a solid 5 2-3 innings and manager Joe Maddon's surprising Rays won 3-1 in the best-of-five series — their first trip to the postseason. Next up, the Boston Red Sox or the Los Angeles Angels starting Friday.
After staving off elimination several times and winning a tiebreaker for the AL Central title, the White Sox were finally knocked out.
The loss dashed Chicago's hope for a championship — days ago, local fans were thinking the Cubs and White Sox might meet in a Windy City Classic. But the Cubs got swept by the Dodgers and now both teams are done.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Upton, the game's second batter, homered to left-center to put the Rays ahead. He went deep again in the third, driving a full-count pitch from Gavin Floyd to center, and the confident Rays had a two-run cushion.
Tampa Bay, which never won more than 70 games during its 10 previous seasons, went from 96 losses last year to 97 wins and passed the big-spending Red Sox and New York Yankees in the AL East.
BOSTON — Jason Bay slid headfirst into home plate to score on Jed Lowrie's two-out single in the ninth inning Monday as the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox beat the Los Angeles Angels 3-2 and advanced to the American League finals for the fourth time in six seasons.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Red Sox brushed aside the 100-win Angels in four games of their AL Division Series.
Boston which also won it all in 2004, will have a chance at a third title in five years if they can get past the Rays in the best-of-seven AL championship series that starts at Tampa Bay on Friday. Boston is 31-16 in October since the turn of the century, and both World Series runs began with a playoff sweep of the Angels.
Los Angeles was able to force the series to a fourth game with an extra-inning victory Sunday night that snapped an 11-game playoff losing streak against Boston.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}As it turned out, that gave them less than an 24 extra hours.
Jon Lester held the Angels to four hits in seven shutout innings but lost his chance at a second victory in the series when Los Angeles scored twice in the eighth to tie it 2-all. The Angels had a chance to go ahead in the ninth before Erick Aybar, whose 12th-inning single was the winner in Game 3, missed on a suicide squeeze attempt, thwarting the threat.