Justin Masterson hangs his head after giving up back-to-back home runs to Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena on Friday night.

AP photo / Chris O'Meara

ST.PETERSBURG, Fla. -- It's become very clear that Evan Longoria and the rest of the Tampa Bay Rays circle the date when they match up with the Boston Red Sox.

For the second straight night, Longoria shook the Sox with a home run and the Rays won. This time Longoria blasted a grand slam in a six-run fifth inning as the Rays nailed down a 6-2 win. Tampa is now 4-1 against the Red Sox this season and the Sox are a woeful 3-12 in their last 15 games at Tropicana Field.

"It gets turned up a little bit when you play teams in the A.L. East, mainly Boston and New York," said Longoria. "These are the games we've got to win. We know that in our division it's going to take probably 10 games over .500 to get into the playoffs. When we get into these tough series, we have to go out there with everything we've got and try to win."

Up until the last two games, the Rays have been searching for answers. The timely hit, the extra base and the key out have all eluded them as they sunk into last place in the division. But these two consecutive wins are the first for Tampa since April 12-13, and the Rays have edged ahead of Baltimore and into fourth place in the division.

"Today was a very, very good sign for us. We hadn't been able to put two offensive games together in a row," said Longoria, who is hitting .455 with four homers and 13 RBI in five games against the Sox this season.

The Red Sox jumped out to a 2-0 lead, but the Rays stormed ahead in the fifth inning with all six of their runs. The Rays couldn't do much with Boston starter Justin Masterson (2-1) over the opening four innings as they managed just one hit and three base runners. But the fifth got ugly quick.

Gabe Gross singled, Akinori Iwamura walked and ninth batter Jason Bartlett was hit by a pitch to load the bases. B.J. Upton knocked in Gross with a sacrifice fly to cut the Sox' lead to 2-1, but Masterson kept hurting himself with a walk to Carl Crawford. That brought up Longoria with two outs. The Rays' second-year star crushed a 2-2 fastball at the letters into the left-field seats for the second grand slam of his career.

"I figured he would throw the slider and I was actually looking for it, but fortunately he left the fastball over the middle and I was able to handle it. Typically in that situation he's able to sink it down a little bit more, but fortunately for us he left one up," said Longoria.

Carlos Pena was the next hitter, and he made matters worse by ripping a Masterson slider into the right-field stands for his 10th home run of the season, the most in baseball.

"They got another huge hit out of the middle of their order," said Boston manager Terry Francona. "They bunched their hits and their base-runners and had a six-run inning, and that was the difference in the ballgame."

Francona noted that Masterson threw five shutout innings and only allowed six hits. But he made a mistake to Longoria, just as Josh Beckett did Thursday night. Both mistakes ended up in the left-field seats.

"[Masterson] got himself into a bind and got into a situation where if you leave a pitch up to one of the best hitters in the game, he did exactly what you don't want him to do. It happened [Thursday] and again in this game. That's a four-run swing. It's a big swing in the game."

Francona added that he thinks Longoria "is a great player. We've seen the last two nights what he can do. You leave the ball in the middle of the plate and he's made the difference in both games."

The Red Sox jumped out to a 2-0 lead off Rays starter Andy Sonnanstine (1-3). A Dustin Pedroia single and Kevin Youkilis' double in the third inning put two runners on, and a walk to J.D. Drew loaded the bases. A four-pitch walk to Bay brought in Pedroia with the game's first run.

The Sox scored again in the fifth when Youkilis cracked his second straight double and Drew followed with an RBI single. But Tampa's relievers kept Boston's bats in check. One key out was credited to Warwick native Dan Wheeler. He came on with two outs and two runners on base in the seventh to face Bay. A sneaky fastball froze Bay for a called third strike to end the threat. Wheeler went on to strike out three Red Sox in his 1.1 innings of work, and said later he's enjoyed seeing how his team has reacted to playing the Sox.

"It's given us a chance to get our intensity back," said Wheeler. "Playing the Red Sox, you have to bring your `A' game every single day. Especially as well as they've been playing. I'm just happy we've been able to do that these last two games."

Sonnanstine beat the Red Sox for the second straight time. The last came in Game Four of the ALCS, when the Rays' offense exploded against Tim Wakefield and sparked a 13-4 win.

Wakefield, Boston's ace starter of late, will pitch in the third game of this series Saturday. The Sox are eager to find anyone to keep the Rays in check.

"We've obviously seen the best of them," said Francona, "and we're going to see them a bunch more, so hopefully we can figure it out. They've played very well against us."

kmcnamar@projo.com