<\/p>\n
The Tampa Bay Rays\u2019 current surge of success began with two straight home victories last week against Kansas City.<\/p>\n
With hot-hitting Junior Caminero leading the way, the Rays look for a sixth consecutive win in the opener of their three-game road set tonight against the Royals at Kauffman Stadium.<\/p>\n
After taking two of three from Washington to open a recent 10-game homestand, Tampa Bay dropped the first two of its four-game set with Kansas City. Then, the Rays posted a 33-9 run advantage while winning the final five to split with the Royals and sweep Arizona. That run has moved the Rays back atop the American League East, a game ahead of the New York Yankees before Monday\u2019s games.<\/p>\n
Caminero went 11-for-22 with seven home runs and 15 RBI in the final six games of the home stretch. Six of those hits \u2014 including four home runs \u2014 came in the last three against the Royals. This included a three-homer, six-RBI effort during the Rays\u2019 13-2 victory Thursday.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the 22-year-old Caminero, who has homered in four straight contests, crushed a 463-foot solo shot \u2014 the longest homer of his career \u2014 during Tampa Bay\u2019s 5-1 win against the Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpecial player doing special things,\u201d Rays manager Kevin Cash said of Caminero, a first-time All-Star in 2025 who has 22 home runs and 49 RBI in 81 games this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, he came into his own here on this homestand where he\u2019s really seeing the ball well, getting pitches he can handle, and not missing them and hitting them a long way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caminero is 0-for-4 against scheduled Royals starter Noah Cameron (4-5, 4.50 ERA). However, he walked twice against the second-year left-hander during the Rays\u2019 5-3 victory last Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Cameron allowed five runs, eight hits and walked three in five innings in that contest. He\u2019s posted a 7.53 ERA in his last three starts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s just part of baseball, part of pitching,\u201d said Cameron, who owned a 2.99 ERA in 24 2025 starts to finish fourth in American League Rookie of the Year voting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, the tides will turn, but we\u2019ve just got to keep pitching and just focusing on what we can control.\u201d<\/p>\n
After opening their seven-game road trip with those two victories against Tampa Bay, the Royals lost four straight before a 5-4 victory Sunday against the Chicago White Sox.<\/p>\n
Kansas City\u2019s Carter Jensen had three hits with two RBI in that game. He\u2019s batting .351 with 17 RBI and 15 runs scored during a 19-game hitting streak.<\/p>\n
Jensen went 1-for-2 with a walk against scheduled Rays starter Griffin Jax (3-5, 3.33) when he opposed Cameron last week. Continuing to be stretched out as a starter, the right-hander allowed five hits and two walks, but only two unearned runs and seven strikeouts over that five-inning performance.<\/p>\n
Jax has yielded five runs \u2014 two earned \u2014 and fanned 21 in 20 innings while 2-1 in his past four starts.<\/p>\n
Budding Kansas City star and Tampa native Jac Caglianone went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts versus Jax last week. However, it\u2019s uncertain if Caglianone, batting .322 with nine homers in 24 June games, will be available after being scratched from Sunday\u2019s lineup with groin soreness,<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Rays hope star Yandy Diaz, with a major league-leading .336 batting average, will be ready after he exited Sunday\u2019s contest with a left shoulder strain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019ll be ready,\u201d Diaz, who went 6-for-14 versus Kansas City last week, told the Rays\u2019 official website.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay has lost 11 of its last 13 on the road. However, the Royals are in the midst of a 6-13 home stretch.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newstribune.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Tampa Bay Rays\u2019 current surge of success began with two straight home victories last week against Kansas City. With hot-hitting Junior Caminero leading the way, the Rays look for a sixth consecutive win in the opener of their three-game road set tonight against the Royals at Kauffman Stadium. After taking two of three from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2481522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2481521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Caminero-leads-Rays-back-atop-AL-East-entering-Royals-trip.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2481521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2481523,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481521\/revisions\/2481523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2481522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2481521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2481521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2481521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}