Yankees Blow Up Rays' Sweep Bid With 12-Run Explosion

This series finale was set up as Drew Rasmussen trying to close out a sweep against a Yankees pitching staff running on fumes. Rasmussen entered as one of the best arms in the league this year, while New York countered with Paul Blackburn, a reliever pressed into an emergency spot start with the rotation gutted. On paper it looked like Tampa Bay's game to lose at 1:10 PM ET.

The Yankees haven't had it easy. Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are both out, Carlos Rodon and Max Fried are rehabbing elbows, and Clarke Schmidt is still weeks from facing hitters. That's the kind of attrition that turns a bullpen arm like Blackburn into a rotation piece out of necessity, not plan. Tampa Bay, meanwhile, had shrugged off its own injury list and rolled into Thursday having won two of the first three games of this set, building a division cushion nobody expected them to need against a shorthanded Yankees lineup.

None of that held up once the first pitch was thrown. The Yankees turned a pitchers'-duel expectation into a laugher, and by the time the dust settled the numbers on the board looked nothing like the pregame script.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
NYY	0	0	6	1	0	3	1	1	0	12	14	0
TB	1	0	2	0	0	1	0	0	0	4	10	1

A 6-run third inning did the real damage, and New York never let Tampa Bay back into it, tacking on more in the sixth, seventh, and eighth. Fourteen hits, zero errors, and length from a bullpen that desperately needed length after a taxing series — that's about as good as an emergency start situation could have gone for the Yankees.

The Rays had won two straight before Thursday and still sit comfortably atop the division, so one lopsided loss with a spot-starter-turned-Rasmussen mismatch flipped on its head doesn't erase the bigger picture. But it's a reminder that even the hottest team in the league can get run off the mound on the wrong afternoon.

New York Yankees at Tampa Bay Rays

Sources