Junior Caminero turned Tropicana Field into his personal power lab Thursday night, crushing three home runs and driving in six as the Tampa Bay Rays pummeled the Kansas City Royals 13-2. Tampa Bay’s staff flirted with history too, taking a combined no-hit bid into the ninth inning before Kansas City finally broke through. From first inning to final out, it was the kind of one-man show that can hijack an entire game.
Caminero’s power show
Caminero got the party started early, opening the scoring with a two-run homer in the first inning, then adding a solo blast in the fifth and a three-run shot off Tyler Tolbert in the eighth. He finished 3-for-5 with three home runs and six RBIs, according to MLB.com. The club’s recap notes it was the first three-homer game of his big-league career and powered a 15-hit, 13-run outburst. The MLB highlights package shows one towering drive after another yanked to left, each leaving little doubt the ball was gone the moment it left his bat.
Pitching comes within two outs of history
On the mound, opener Casey Legumina and Ian Seymour mowed down the first 16 Royals hitters and kept the no-hitter intact deep into the late innings before Craig Kimbrel surrendered Carter Jensen’s two-run homer with one out in the ninth, as detailed by CBS Sports. Seymour earned the win with a dominant long-relief stint, and the bullpen otherwise provided a clean backdrop for the offensive eruption. The near miss was the closest the Rays have come to a no-hitter at the Trop since Matt Garza’s gem on July 26, 2010.
Why this night matters
Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano cast the performance as a reset button for the 22-year-old slugger, noting that the three homers "tied a franchise record" and arguing that the outburst made Caminero look like his old self again, per the Tampa Bay Times. Romano places the night in the longer arc of a young hitter who has teased star potential from the moment he arrived. For a team staring down a tougher stretch of the schedule, it is the kind of game that can change the temperature in the clubhouse.
A milestone and a jolt
Statistically, the game goes down as Caminero’s first three-homer outing in the majors, a milestone that will stand out on his season line, according to MLB.com. Beyond the numbers, those three swings reinforce him as the thunderbolt in the middle of Tampa Bay’s order. Whether this turns into a full-on summer surge or remains a single, spectacular entry on the highlight reel, it is the kind of night teammates will be talking about for a while.
Rays takeaways and what’s next
The victory nudged Tampa Bay back above .500, with the club sitting at 45-33 after the win, according to the game tracker at CBS Sports, and it delivered a well-timed shot of momentum as the season edges toward the midsummer grind. The Rays stay at Tropicana Field for their next set of games, hoping to bottle whatever was in Caminero’s bat for the road ahead. For now, the lesson is pretty simple: when he is locked in like this, the scoreboard does most of the talking.
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