There's an old joke in baseball front offices: when the Tampa Bay Rays call about a trade, just hang up the phone. ESPN's Bradford Doolittle aimed it right at Cleveland this month. "Guardians: When the Rays call, hang up the phone!" he wrote.

Saturday night showed why. Two of the biggest swings in Tampa Bay's 7-3 Game 4 win came from players Cleveland traded away. Junior Caminero's go-ahead double in the sixth inning and Yandy Díaz's two-run homer in the ninth helped tie the American League Championship Series at 2-2, per the AP.

So the ALCS is now a best-of-three. Game 5 is tonight at 5 p.m. ET in Cleveland on TBS and truTV, and the winner moves one win from a World Series date with the Milwaukee Brewers.

The trades that keep on giving

Caminero came over as a prospect in a deal for pitcher Tobias Myers, who never pitched in the majors for Cleveland, ESPN noted. Caminero is now 23, an AL MVP candidate and the Rays' cornerstone, and his 94 career homers are the ninth most for a player through his age-22 season.

Díaz arrived in a three-team trade in 2018. He'd hit .312 in his last Cleveland season, albeit over just 39 games, but he had exactly one big-league homer, and the knock on him was that he hit the ball on the ground too much. The Rays leaned into what he did well instead. He won the AL batting title in 2023 and led the league in hits this season, per ESPN.

And the pitcher who keeps shutting Cleveland down? Nick Martinez, a classic Rays bargain who signed for one year and $9 million and went 15-6. Counting Game 4, he's 3-0 against Cleveland this season, allowing one run in 18 1/3 innings, per the AP.

Baseball's bargain-bin final three

Zoom out and this whole postseason has been a win for the little guys. In March, the Brewers were 35-1 to win the World Series, Cleveland was 70-1 and Tampa Bay was 80-1, according to DraftKings odds cited by ESPN.

They're cheap, too. Cleveland's Opening Day payroll was the lowest in baseball, and the Rays are almost always in the bottom five. Take the payrolls of the Guardians, Rays and Brewers, subtract them from the Dodgers' payroll, and you'd still have $35.6 million left over, per Cot's Contracts numbers cited by ESPN. Milwaukee swept those Dodgers in four games anyway.

The two AL teams just get there in opposite ways. Cleveland grows its own: its 40-man roster is 58% homegrown, second only to St. Louis. Closer Cade Smith went undrafted in 2020 and became what ESPN calls the game's best closer. The Rays are at 18%, the lowest in baseball. They trade, they claim off waivers, and they win deals like the two that came back to bite Cleveland on Saturday.

What to watch tonight

Rays ace Drew Rasmussen faces Cleveland's All-Star rookie lefty Parker Messick, per the AP. Tampa Bay won five of six regular-season meetings, but tonight's game is in Cleveland, and both fan bases are starving. The Guardians haven't won a World Series since 1948, the longest drought in the majors. The Rays have never won one.

Cleveland rookie Travis Bazzana sounded unbothered after Game 4. "You just got to flush it and come back strong tomorrow," he said.

There's no breather, either. Rain pushed Game 4 back a day, so Game 6 is Monday at 8 p.m. ET in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Game 7, if needed, is Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET. Milwaukee gets to watch with snacks. World Series Game 1 is Friday, Oct. 23, in Milwaukee on Fox. "Cherish these moments, but know there is more to come," the Brewers posted. Spoken like a team that's already packed.