Rasmussen’s seven strikeouts came with hard contact and two first-pitch home runs

Drew Rasmussen had kept Cleveland scoreless through five innings when Chase DeLauter opened the sixth by hitting his first pitch for a home run. Patrick Bailey did the same to begin the seventh. One was a four-seam fastball and the other a cutter. Together they turned Tampa Bay’s 2–0 lead into a 2–2 tie and ended Rasmussen’s night.

Rasmussen finished with six innings, eight hits, two earned runs and seven strikeouts, without a walk. His 91st and final pitch was Bailey’s game-tying homer, so the six-inning line includes a batter faced in the seventh without an out recorded in that inning.

The strikeout total captures an important part of the outing. The complete pitch record adds another: Cleveland missed only seven times on 52 swing attempts and produced nine hard-hit balls among 18 measured balls in play. Those opportunities help explain how the Guardians kept threatening before the two home runs finally changed the score.

How the pitch mix changed

Rasmussen used 30 cutters, 25 four-seam fastballs, 22 sinkers, 12 changeups and two curveballs. The cutter led at 33.0% of the outing, up from 28.8% in the comparison. Four-seam and sinker shares remained close to their comparison levels. No sweeper was recorded in Game 1.

The comparison contains 2,596 pitches from 29 fully reconciled Tampa Bay regular-season starts between March 26 and September 22. His April 18 start is excluded in full because the public event feed contains 63 physical pitches against an official total of 64. No missing pitch or measurement has been estimated.

Cleveland’s left-handed hitters accounted for 76 of the 91 pitches, a larger share than in the comparison. That matters when interpreting the overall mix. Rasmussen used 25 cutters in those 76 pitches, against 422 in 1,566 comparison pitches to left-handed hitters. The increase is visible within that hitter group, although one game cannot establish a lasting change.

What the strikes and contact show

The cutter averaged 89.5 mph, compared with 89.9 in the reconciled sample. It drew 20 swing attempts and two misses, a 10.0% miss rate against 25.6% in the comparison. Cleveland put seven cutters in play, four at 95 mph or harder. Bailey’s homer was the last of those contacts.

The four-seam averaged 95.6 mph, against 95.8 in the comparison, and produced four misses from 16 swings. Its six called strikes brought the pitch’s called-strike-plus-whiff rate to 40.0%. The sinker drew no misses on seven swings but supplied eight called strikes. Those takes were a substantial part of Rasmussen’s ability to acquire strikes.

Overall, his seven misses from 52 swings produced a 13.5% rate, compared with 25.2% in the regular-season sample. Sixteen called strikes raised his called-strike-plus-whiff rate to 25.3% of all pitches. Seven completed strikeouts can coexist with that lower miss rate because strikeouts also depend on count progression and called strikes.

DeLauter’s home run came on outing pitch 81, a 94.1 mph four-seam at a measured plate location of −0.464 feet horizontally and 2.956 feet vertically. His contact was measured at 102.3 mph with a 26-degree launch angle and a 381-foot tracked distance. Bailey’s homer came on pitch 91, a 90.4 mph cutter at 0.214 feet horizontally and 2.732 feet vertically. It left at 105.3 mph, also at 26 degrees, with a 436-foot tracked distance.

Both pitches were inside each hitter’s recorded ball-center strike-zone rectangle. Their locations show where the ball crossed the plate, without establishing the intended target or proving a mechanical mistake. The different pitch types also make it inaccurate to describe the two homers as punishment of the same offering.

Workload and the final line

Rasmussen spent 21, 15, 19, 13 and 12 pitches on the first five innings. The sixth cost ten, followed by Bailey’s single pitch in the seventh. The seven strikeouts helped him get through threats, including consecutive strikeouts of Bailey and Petey Halpin in the fourth after Travis Bazzana singled and stole second.

Cleveland’s nine hard-hit balls represented half of its 18 measured balls in play against Rasmussen, compared with 152 of 446, or 34.1%, in the comparison. All of the outing’s balls in play have an exit-speed measurement. That stronger contact profile is a more complete account of the pressure than either the scoreless opening five innings or the strikeout total alone.

Cam Booser replaced Rasmussen after Bailey’s homer. The Rays bullpen later conceded five more runs as Cleveland won 7–3. Those runs belong to the subsequent pitching sequence. Rasmussen’s own analysis ends with the tying homer and a six-inning line that combined strike acquisition with repeated contact.