Rays show reeling Yankees what winning baseball looks like
Tampa Bay Rays players celebrate their 3-1 win against the New York Yankees in an MLB baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Monday, May 31, 2021. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The surging Rays look superior to the Yankees by nearly every measure.
That familiar trend returned Monday in Tampa Bay’s 3-1 victory at the Stadium.
You name it. Pitching. Defense. Situational hitting. All aspects of the game. And this time the Rays even did a better job than the Yankees in exploiting the Bronx’s cozy dimensions when a happily surprised Austin Meadows lofted a 334-foot home run (exit velo 97 mph) that barely cleared the rightfield wall by two rows.
What’s left? Are the Rays going to show up wearing pinstripes Tuesday?
Maybe the Yankees clawed back a few crumbs of respect by winning two of three at Tropicana Field earlier this month. But the first-place Rays returned to full ownership mode Monday in taking the series opener behind ancient junkballer Rich Hill (five innings, three singles) and a minimalist, resourceful offense, winning for the 16th time in 17 games.
That’s just their current streak overall. Against the Yankees, they improved to 20-7 dating to 2019, and with ace Tyler Glasnow facing this zombified lineup Tuesday, we’re not expecting a change in narrative.
It figures that Meadows was able to open the fourth by punching Jameson Taillon’s slider for a pop-up dinger that would have been an out in every other MLB ballpark — and that a few Yankees came up short in the same neighborhood.
"I don’t have too much experience pitching here, but I thought there was a good chance that ball was going to be caught somewhere around the warning track," said Taillon, who dropped to 1-4 with a 5.10 ERA. "But I missed my spot. That’s not where I wanted to throw the pitch to Meadows anyways, so I kind of had it coming, I guess."
Aaron Judge specifically took aim at the porch in the third inning and reacted in disgust when his fly ball died at the back of the warning track. Miguel Andujar prevented the Yankees from being shut out for the third time this season with a two-out homer angled more toward right-center in the seventh, but it was only the Yankees’ sixth run in the last four games.
"I don’t want to call it pressure," Andujar said through an interpreter, "but I understand we’re going through a tough time as a team. It’s one of those things that you can go through during a season. The key thing is I believe in my teammates and I know we’re going to get out of it."
Knowing is one thing. The issue for the Yankees (now 5 1⁄2 games back) is the doing part, and if they don’t start this week — with three more against the Rays, followed by a three-game visit by the Red Sox — we’re going to seriously question if it’s even possible.
On Monday, the Rays did the usual stuff in the margins to win. They scored the first run on Manuel Margot’s RBI double in the third inning but were helped when Judge’s high throw clanged off the glove of cutoff man Rougned Odor. Meadows added his Little League rainbow and Randy Arozarena’s two-out RBI single in the fifth made it 3-0, which feels like 30-0 these days to Aaron Boone & Co.
Meanwhile, the Yankees couldn’t string a few hits together if their lives depended on it, and Brett Gardner’s one-out walk in the fifth was the only inning that didn’t start with them in an immediate two-out hole. Of course, that ended when DJ LeMahieu bounced into the team’s 52nd double play, the most in the majors (the league average is 36).
Otherwise, the Yankees were victimized by their predictable big-swinging habits. Giancarlo Stanton, who went 0-for-4 with a pair of Ks, is 0-for-12 with eight strikeouts since Friday’s return. The Rays either executed their pitching strategy to stifle the Yankees or had defenders shifted perfectly to vacuum up potential hits.
Offensively, the Rays’ versatile lineup kept the pressure on Taillon, who was fried after five innings-plus.
"They play a good, hard team game," he said. "They do a lot of things really well throughout the lineup. I think they’ve got a mix of speed, a good mix of righthanded and lefthanded hitters. A mix of power, a mix of contact. A mix of patience with some aggressive guys. So they throw a bunch of different looks at you.
"I think they’re one of the few teams in the league that from at-bat to at-bat, you’ll find them looking in different areas of the strike zone or looking for different pitches. They just adjust really well to what you’re doing and what your strengths are that day."
Huh? Imagine that. Maybe the Yankees need to have someone taking notes. For the best examples of what they should be doing, just watch the Rays.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
