Diaz shrugs off pressure as 2-HR night fuels Rays

OAKLAND — Pressure? You think a 92 mph fastball on the outside corner with a huge and vocal crowd bearing down on you in a playoff game is pressure?

Try riding a raft to freedom from your native Cuba, after being caught once before, or playing winter league baseball in Venezuela, where firearms in the stands was the norm.

“In Cuba, they probably had knives and machetes,” a champagne-soaked Tampa Bay Rays first baseman Yandy Diaz said in Spanish with a laugh. “In Venezuela, if you made an error, maybe you’d get shot.”

Instead, it was Diaz who drove a stake through the heart of the Oakland Athletics on Wednesday night, hitting a pair of opposite-field solo home runs in the Rays’ 5-1 win at Rickey Henderson Field, stunning a wild-card record crowd of 54,005, and sending Tampa Bay into a division series with the Houston Astros.

The A’s, meanwhile, dropped their MLB-record ninth straight winner-take-all playoff game and, since 2000, fell to 1-15 in postseason games in which they would advance with a win.

Indeed, neither the size nor the tenor of the raucous crowd got to Diaz, who only came off the 60-day injured list on Sunday after suffering a hairline fracture on his left foot from a foul ball on July 22.

In fact, Diaz had not homered in a game since July 18, and was just 2 for his last 24 before facing the A’s. His inclusion in the Rays’ lineup was somewhat of a surprise.

“I don’t know if we expected that kind of performance,” said Rays manager Kevin Cash. “He made us look a lot smarter than we are.

“The thing that stood out the most about Yandy was how hard he hit the baseball. In the air, on the ground, wherever. He hits the ball as hard as anybody in baseball and he does it at a consistent clip. We have not said one thing to him about hitting the ball in the air, any of that. We took the approach of, ‘Let him be. Give him consistent reps … and let the player figure it out a little bit.'”

Diaz figured A’s starter Sean Manaea out five pitches into the game, driving his 92 mph offering on a 3-and-1 count into the seats in right-center.

In the third inning, with Tampa Bay holding a 3-0 lead, Diaz again went opposite field on the fifth pitch of the at-bat, homering on a 2-and-2, 91 mph pitch over the 362-foot sign, nearly the same spot as his first homer.

A hearty bat flip ensued, as did a look back into the Rays dugout as he circled the bases and chased Manaea from the game after just two-plus innings.

“They kind of beat us with our game,” said A’s manager Bob Melvin.

Diaz later added a single and was 3-for-4 on the night. He entered the game batting .500 (8-for-16) with a double, two home runs and three walks when batting leadoff. It was also the second multi-home run of his career, which began with the Cleveland Indians in 2017 before he was traded to Tampa Bay last December.

But about that pressure. Diaz said the crowds may have been smaller in Venezuela but the intensity they brought for the Caracas games against rival Magallanes was more than what he has felt in the big leagues.

“You can put pressure on yourself,” Diaz said. “But you have to act like this is a normal game, just another game.”‘

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