CLEVELAND — The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Cleveland Guardians 3-1 in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series on Sunday, taking a 3-2 series lead.
Drew Rasmussen started for Tampa Bay and pitched seven innings. He allowed four hits and one run, walked one and struck out six on 95 pitches. Parker Messick started for Cleveland, was pulled after two innings and took the loss. He allowed five hits and two earned runs, walked two and struck out three on 57 pitches. Tim Herrin came in for Cleveland in the third inning.
Game 6 is Monday at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Rays need one more win to reach the World Series. If a Game 7 is needed, it would be played Tuesday. Cleveland has not won an ALCS after trailing 3-2, according to the series records.
Denise Oakley, 47, a claims adjuster from Lakewood, Ohio, sat in Section 118 on Sunday with a scorecard on her knee. She said the team had a plan.
“We just have to take it one game at a time,” she said.
Asked what that meant for Monday, Ms. Oakley said Game 6 would have to be won first, and that she had already written it down. She said the Guardians would play Game 6 on Sunday night in Cleveland, win it in the late innings and then wait for Monday, when the official start would be announced. She did not say who would announce it, or whether the Rays would be informed.
Her scorecard showed three Tampa Bay runs in pencil and one Cleveland run in ink. She said the ink was more reliable.
Ms. Oakley has filled in a card for every Guardians home game since 2004, when she and her sister took the bus from Lakewood to see a Tuesday game against a team whose name she no longer remembers. She said the card for that game is the only one she has never finished.
Cleveland now trails the series, and the club will have to answer the deficit in a game it has not yet played. Guardians fans said they were not worried.
“It’s a long series,” said Ms. Oakley, who has held season tickets since 2004. “You can’t put a schedule in front of a team that’s been pitching this well. You have to let them get to Monday.”
She said she would be back at Progressive Field for Game 6 with the scorecard, in case the game needed to be written down before it started.
The Rays are one win from the pennant. The Guardians are one game from a result that Ms. Oakley has already recorded in pencil.