Tampa Bay Rays at Houston Astros: Final Score & Recap

The Tampa Bay Rays defeated the Houston Astros 3-1 at Daikin Park on July 3, 2026, handing Houston a loss the DiamondIQ model had assigned just a 41 percent pre-game likelihood of avoiding. The game was scoreless through five innings before the two clubs exchanged runs in the sixth, but it was the Rays who pulled away with single runs in the seventh and eighth to secure the final margin. Tampa Bay managed five hits against three for Houston, and each team committed one error in a tightly contested affair.

The decisive sequence belonged almost entirely to Nick Fortes, who produced the two highest win-probability swings of the night for Tampa Bay. In the sixth inning, Fortes hit a home run off Spencer Arrighetti that shifted win probability 14.6 points in the Rays' favor. He followed that in the eighth with a double off Enyel De Los Santos that represented the single largest swing of the game at plus 18.2 percent, pushing Houston's chances of a comeback to essentially nothing and accounting for a combined WPA of plus 31.7, the highest mark on either side. Junior Caminero also factored prominently, connecting for a home run off Steven Okert in the seventh for a 16.5-point swing. On the Houston side, Yordan Alvarez provided the lone significant counterpunch with a sixth-inning home run off Nick Martinez worth plus 15.3 points, but the Astros could not build on it.

From the pitching side, Spencer Arrighetti led all pitchers in WPA at plus 19.3 despite surrendering the Fortes home run, benefiting from the overall game context, while Kevin Kelly contributed plus 17.1 and Casey Legumina added plus 13.3 out of the Rays' bullpen to close things out. Cam Smith registered an 11.1-point WPA swing on a lineout in the ninth that effectively ended Houston's last hope, though his RE24 of minus 0.4 reflected the stranded opportunity. The DiamondIQ model's estimate of Houston's win probability fell to zero percent by game's end.