The Tampa Bay Rays got more than their share of revenge on Sunday. After the New York Yankees won the first two games of the series, the Rays retaliated with a 12-3 win.
Tampa did most of the damage in the fourth and seventh innings. In the fourth, designated hitter Corey Dickerson hit a three-run home run off of Yankees starter Luis Severino to give the Rays a 5-1 lead. They weren’t done. Third baseman Evan Longoria smacked a three-run double to center for one of his three hits in the game.
In the midst of the six-run fourth inning, Severino was pulled. The Yanks starter went just 3.2 innings and allowed seven earned runs on eight hits. He fell to 1-8 on the season and his earned run average soared to an unsightly 7.19. The lone bright spot of his outing was the seven strikeouts he racked up out of the eight outs he recorded. Luis Cessa came in to relieve Severino, but he didn’t fare much better. In three innings, he gave up five runs on five hits.
While Cessa was responsible for one of the runs in the fourth, he was responsible for all four of Tampa’s runs in the seventh. Shortstop Matt Duffy recorded an RBI single, but the real damage came on left fielder Nick Franklin’s three-run blast, which provided the Rays with a 12-3 lead. Second baseman Logan Forsythe also had a homer back in the third inning for Tampa Bay.
Jake Odorizzi turned in a quality start for the Rays amid the oodles of run support. He tossed six innings of three-run ball and struck out six. The two blemishes on his start also turned out to be the Yankees lone bright spot of the game: home runs from right fielder Aaron Judge and catcher Gary Sanchez.
The Yankees and Rays still sit fourth and fifth in the American League East, respectively. New York is 6.5 games out of first in the division behind the Toronto Blue Jays, but sits just 4.5 games out of a wild card spot, behind the arch-rival Boston Red Sox. The Rays are completely out of contention, but showed that they’re apt to play spoiler as they did against the Yankees on Sunday.
The Yanks will host the Blue Jays for three games in New York, while the Rays will welcome the San Diego Padres to Tampa.
