Taylor Walls, Nick Martinez lead the way as Rays grab 8th straight win

Marc Topkin, Tampa Bay Times on Aug 12, 2026

Published in Baseball

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There was a hefty list of notable accomplishments to come out of the Rays’ 12-4 win over the A’s on Tuesday night in Sacramento, California.

Overall, they extended their latest winning streak to eight games, improved their American League-leading record to 73-46 and slugged a franchise-record six home runs.

Individually, Nick Martinez threw a 101-pitch complete game, the first by a Ray since Zack Littell did so on May 31, 2025. It was the second of Martinez’s career.

Junior Caminero moved into rare air for a Ray in moving into a tie for the major-league home run lead with his 35th. Yandy Diaz moved into third place on the franchise all-time hits list with 1,017. Chandler Simpson rapped a couple more hits to increase his average to .307, second in the AL and fourth in the majors.

But what this game is going to be remembered for is what Taylor Walls — yes, that Taylor Walls, the light-hitting, slick-fielding shortstop — did, hitting two home runs.

In the fourth inning, Walls, batting left-handed, hit a two-run homer, his first since July 27, 2025. His next time up in the sixth inning, batting right-handed, he went deep again, marking the second multi-homer game of his career.

How?

He said he didn’t have a good answer.

“I started playing some dominos (like Caminero sometimes does). The baseball gods picked the wind up for me. I just hit it right, I guess. I don’t know,” Walls said during the Rays.TV onfield interview.

The first, on April 18, 2023, at Cincinnati, also came with homers from both sides of the plate (including one off current teammate Casey Legumina).

Only four Rays have done that, and Walls is the only one to do it twice. The others with homers from both sides of the plate are Geoff Blum, on May 4, 2004, at Texas; Willy Aybar, Aug. 3, 2009, versus Kansas City; and Ben Zobrist, April 13, 2014, at Cincinnati.

The win extended the Rays’ win streak to eight games, one shy of their season high. This is the third time in their 29 seasons they have had two streaks of at least eight wins, joining 2021, when they won a franchise-record 100, and 2018, when they won 90.

Manager Kevin Cash asked Martinez after the seventh inning what he was thinking, and Martinez said he wanted to go for the complete game.

Though he allowed three hits and two runs in the ninth, Martinez got it.

He allowed eight hits overall, struck out five and walked none (for the third straight stat) in his first nine-inning complete game. His other, on the final game of the 2024 season for the Reds, was for eight innings in a 1-0 loss.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Martinez also said on the field. “Obviously I don’t come in with the mindset of throwing a CG, especially in this place where things can happen fast. The mentality is go until they take the ball from you.

“I did look up (at the scoreboard) after the sixth and saw I was a real low pitch count and I was like, shoot, man I might be able to do this.”

Said Cash: “I’m so pumped for him. The whole clubhouse right now is very excited. That’s impressive the way he navigated through that.”

Like in Monday night’s series opener, the Rays grabbed the early lead with a first-inning homer.

Diaz, who homered to open Monday’s game, led off Tuesday by lining a ball that A’s centerfielder Henry Bolte played into a two-base error.

With one out, Caminero laced a ball that left his bat at 105.4 mph and carried 412 feet before loudly clanging off the centerfield wall.

That was Caminero’s 35th homer of the season, pushing him into a four-way tie for the major-league lead with Houston’s Yordan Alvarez, Atlanta’s Matt Olson and Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber.

Of note, per the Elias Sports Bureau, that marked the latest into a season any Rays player has ever been atop that list (alone or tied). The previous mark was June 28th in the 1999 season by Jose Canseco.

The Rays built on the lead.

They got another run in the third when Caminero walked, went to second on a wild pitch, third on a fielder’s choice and scored on a Simpson sac fly.

Walls hit his first homer with two outs and Richie Palacios on in the fourth, and Diaz followed with a blast of his own on the next pitch to make the score 6-0.

The A’s got two runs off Martinez in their fourth on a homer by Lawrence Butler. Then the Rays tacked on another when Walls homered again in the sixth.

Victor Mesa Jr. hit a two-run homer in the seventh. Then Carson Williams, a recent call-up, pinch-hit in the eighth for Caminero and delivered a three-run blast, extending the lead to 12-2.