CLEVELAND — Junior Caminero would not be denied.
The Tampa Bay Rays’ superstar slugger was still seeking his first signature postseason moment going into ALCS Game 4 on Saturday at Progressive Field. And with Tampa Bay down 2-1 to the Cleveland Guardians in the series, it was crucial for the Rays’ best player to make his presence felt sooner rather than later.
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Caminero was also coming off an uncharacteristically sloppy showing at the plate in Game 3. The 23-year-old wasn’t the only Rays hitter who didn’t muster much in Tampa Bay’s 3-2 loss, but Caminero’s struggles stood out. No one in the majors swings the bat faster than Caminero, but he’s still able to make contact and avoid punching out at an above-average clip. That, in a nutshell, is what makes him special. But on Thursday against a trio of terrific right-handers in Gavin Williams, Daniel Espino and Cade Smith, Caminero struck out four times for just the second time in his career and first since Aug. 17, 2025. This after he drove in only one run across his first five games of the postseason.
“I would say Cami is highly motivated to get going, and rightfully so. Because every challenge that he’s met or big game that he’s been in, he’s found his way to have some success and really impact the game,” manager Kevin Cash said ahead of Game 4.
“[Game 3] was not his best game. Gotta credit the Guardians’ pitching for the way they attacked him. But he’s going to make the adjustments needed and find a way to get his name in the paper in the best possible way moving forward.”
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Those adjustments were on full display Saturday, as Caminero finally found the big swing he’d been looking for in Tampa Bay’s 7-3 victory to even the ALCS at two games apiece. After Daniel Espino walked Jonathan Aranda and Chandler Simpson to lead off the sixth inning, Caminero strolled to the plate in a tie game with a golden opportunity to push the Rays ahead. This was Caminero’s third encounter with Espino in the series, and the first two had not gone well. In Game 1, Caminero swung through three fastballs at 98.2, 99.4 and 98.6 mph. In Game 3, Espino cranked up the heat further and got the same result by pumping 100.6, 100.6 and 100.3 mph past Caminero, all at the top of the zone.
In Game 4, Espino once again came with the high heat, but this time, it was only 97.9 mph – and Caminero didn’t miss it. Third time was the charm: Caminero blistered the ball over a leaping José Ramírez and down the left-field line to drive in Aranda and make it 2-1 Tampa Bay.
It wasn’t just the redemption against Espino that made Caminero’s sixth-inning double so satisfying. It was also how his first two at-bats of the game had unfolded. Caminero’s eagerness to break through was evident in his first trip to the plate. Moved down to fourth in the batting order after hitting third in the Rays’ first six games this October, Caminero came up to bat after Guardians second baseman Travis Bazzana made an error to allow Chandler Simpson to reach. But Caminero jumped at a first-pitch cutter from Cleveland opener Shawn Armstrong and grounded out weakly to second base. Statcast measured his swing at an elite 81.6 mph, but the ball left his bat at a harmless 73.7 mph to end the inning.
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When Caminero led off the fourth, RBI singles from Chase DeLauter and Jonathan Aranda had the game knotted at 1. In his second at-bat, this time facing Cleveland left-hander Foster Griffin, Caminero’s unrivaled right-handed cut made a more familiar kind of contact — the kind the Rays had been waiting for all October.
After landing a sweeper for a called strike one, Griffin attacked with a 92-mph fastball above the zone, and Caminero pounced. This time, his swing speed checked in at only 79.7 mph — still elite — but the barrel met the ball flush, sending it sizzling toward straightaway center field at 110.7 mph with a 29-degree launch angle. Similar combinations of batted ball metrics have quite literally produced only home runs since Statcast began tracking in 2015.
But on this especially chilly night in Cleveland — 46 degrees was the lowest recorded first-pitch temperature for a postseason game since Game 1 of the 2019 NLCS in St. Louis — it was not to be.
Guardians center fielder Petey Halpin bolted back toward the fence and began backpedaling once he reached the warning track. It briefly looked like he lost track of the ball, but at the last moment, Halpin recovered and made a falling catch just in front of the deepest part of the outfield wall.
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As the sellout Progressive Field crowd of 33,355 went wild, the Rays and Caminero were positively stunned. Reliever Tyler Wells was in the bullpen deep beyond the right-center-field fence, so his view of Caminero’s batted ball’s landing spot was somewhat obscured. But when Caminero connected, its destination appeared certain.
“Whenever I saw everyone cheering, I was really confused,” Wells said afterward. “I was like, ‘What happened? Did this guy scale up half the wall? Did he pull a Spider-Man?’ But it didn’t even make it to the wall.”
“I’ve seen that a lot of times this year,” Simpson said later. “And most likely, it is going over the fence.”
Did Caminero think it was gone? “100 percent.”
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But it was not. At a projected 410 feet, it was tied for the farthest batted ball hit for an out at Progressive Field in the Statcast Era.
“Found a glove that time,” Simpson said. “But he was able to come up big for us later in the game.”
That he was. Caminero — who finished the night 1-for-5 with two strikeouts — was ultimately overshadowed in the Game 4 box score by Aranda and Yandy Diaz, who combined for five hits and four RBI, including Diaz’s ninth-inning, two-run homer that put the game out of reach. But Caminero’s pair of particularly scorched batted balls can only portend good things as the Rays continue to push for a World Series berth.
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“I have a lot of experience in this ballpark and know that it can be a little tricky on the cold nights,” Cash said of Caminero’s surprising non-homer. “Didn’t look like there was a ton of wind, but that cool air can knock it down a little bit.
“But overall, just happy that Junior squared some balls up.”
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