Frustrating loss: Yankees play Rays tough, but it's not enough
Aaron Judge of the Yankees gestures in the direction of Rays pitcher Jason Adam (not pictured) after just missing the game-tying home run to end their game at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Conventional wisdom suggests the Yankees should be happy splitting a weekend series with the Rays, who remain baseball’s gold standard in mid-May. The relentless mindset the Yankees displayed in a pair of comeback wins over the AL East leader was encouraging, and they nearly pulled off a third in Sunday’s thrilling 8-7 loss before a crowd of 42,116.
While that’s all true, we can’t help but feel that this Mother’s Day was a missed opportunity for Aaron Boone & Co., a still-healing group that has plenty of hill to climb (eight games out) to get back in this division race.
Sure, the difference between the two teams on the field has been incredibly small — the Rays have gone 4-3 against the Yankees, and six of the seven games were decided by one run — but Sunday was a matter of a few inches and a couple of feet.
We’ll start with the final swing, a 399-foot blast by Aaron Judge that Jose Siri reeled in at the warning track in left-centerfield with the entire Stadium — including Rays reliever Jason Adam — holding its collective breath. This was the hardest-hit ball by anyone all game — 111.9 mph, according to Statcast — and would have cleared the fence in 19 of 30 ballparks. Just not the widest expanse of lawn in the Bronx.
“I hit it good, but off the bat, just too high — especially with how deep it is out there,” Judge said. “I was kind of praying for a miracle once it got up there.”
And speaking of praying for miracles, that’s probably what Boone was thinking when he brought in embattled reliever Albert Abreu to put out a raging fire in the fifth inning.
The Yankees already had roared back from a 3-0 deficit to go up 4-3 (sound familiar?) before the shaky Clarke Schmidt got busy trying to flush it all away.
Schmidt had survived the fifth only three times in eight starts this season (put an asterisk next to the six innings vs. the mail-it-in A’s), so Boone surely knew he was on thin ice, especially with the top of the Rays’ lineup waiting. Schmidt whiffed Siri for the first out but then loaded the bases in a blink and needed a spectacular full-sprint, Superman dive at the track by Harrison Bader to limit Randy Arozarena to a sacrifice fly.
But the Rays would get their grand slam anyway. Schmidt got burned and pitching coach Matt Blake eventually got tossed when a borderline 3-and-2 call wound up as a bases-loaded walk to Josh Lowe. Stuck with a short bullpen, Boone signaled for Abreu, who was one strike away from escaping with the score tied. But his fourth straight changeup was right in the nitro zone for Taylor Walls, who whacked it over the right-centerfield wall.
For a guy who throws 98 mph, it was a questionable pitch sequence — one that even Boone took issue with afterward. But Abreu felt the spot is what doomed him.
“My job is to go in there and minimize damage,” Abreu said through an interpreter. “Unfortunately, we missed location. A pitch like that, in that count [1-and-2], has to be down and away there. I missed my location, and when you do that, you end up paying for it.”
A matter of inches, really. And for those asking why a low-trust reliever like Abreu wound up in that particular high-leverage lane Sunday, Boone pointed to the bullpen mileage after the past two grinding wins over the Rays. With Wandy Peralta and Clay Holmes unavailable — not to mention Schmidt’s brief, bumpy stint — the trickle-down effect was needing innings from Abreu.
It was curious, however, that Boone did wind up using Ron Marinaccio for the ninth after the Yankees cut it to 8-7. Even Michael King got warm along the way, so there seemed to be better choices available for that pivotal flashpoint in the fifth. Still, Abreu got the Yankees to within that one pitch.
“We were just short back there today,” Boone said. “I’ll leave it at that.”
The manager’s explanation will have to serve as the epitaph for the series finale, because this was another very winnable game for the Yankees, who again showed that being at the bottom of the AL East hardly is a reason to be counted out. Once Schmidt and his 6.30 ERA are no longer part of this rotation — Luis Severino could return as early as next weekend in Cincinnati — another weak link will be gone, provided the Yankees can get Nestor Cortes fixed, too.
Regardless, the Yankees emerged from this series split a better team than the one that got blown out by the Rays in Thursday’s Bronx opener. But this isn’t a franchise that does consolation prizes, and it felt as if they left something on the table Sunday.
“You think you can grab every one of them,” Judge said. “But we’ll see them down the road.”
As much as ever, these Yankees-Rays showdowns are something to look forward to.
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.
