Rays shut down by Yankees ace Gerrit Cole
Gerrit Cole #GerritCole
ST. PETERSBURG — Relatively speaking, the Rays did okay Wednesday against Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, striking out 12 times over eight innings but managing four hits, including a pair of doubles.
But, as has been the case against many less-dominant pitchers as well, they couldn’t do anything with the limited opportunities they had.
And while they Rays’ quintet of pitchers was nearly as effective, the Yankees did convert on one of their few scoring chances, and it was enough for a 1-0 win.
The loss dropped the Rays back to .500 for the 10th time this season at 19-19 and marked their first series loss to the Yankees since the middle of the 2019 season, having won six regular-season series and the five-game 2020 American League Division Series.
The Yankees got their run in the seventh inning, the rally starting against Ryan Thompson, who was the third Rays pitcher of the night. Aaron Judge led off with a single to left, then Gio Urshela drove the next pitch to the right of center, over the heads of outfielders Brett Phillips and Manuel Margot for a double.
Joey Wendle smothered Luke Voit’s ground ball to third and threw across the diamond for the first out. Manager Kevin Cash went next to lefty Jeffrey Springs, turning around switch-hitter Aaron Hicks. But that didn’t work as Hicks delivered a sacrifice fly to center on an 0-2 slider, allowing Judge to score.
The game was played, and apparently never in question, despite the COVID-19 outbreak among the Yankees growing to seven members of their traveling party — three coaches and four staff members. Plus, shortstop Gleyber Torres was held out of the lineup pending test results.
But Major League Baseball officials were apparently comfortable with the results of contact-tracing that there was no need to postpone the game for the “abundance of caution” that is often cited.
The Rays were well aware of the challenge of facing Cole, who came into the game with an amazing total of 66 strikeouts and three walks on the season. And they had had some success, pinning him with his only loss April 18 game in New York.
To their credit, they got four hits off Cole in the first six innings: A double off the B-ring catwalk by Austin Meadows in the first, a single to right by Yandy Diaz in the second, a shift-beating bunt single by Brandon Lowe in the fourth and a double by Randy Arozarena high off the leftfield wall in the sixth.
The two doubles were their best scoring chances.
Meadows got to third on Manuel Margot’s ground out but then Lowe struck out.
Arozarena, whose initial reaction seemed like he had a homer, got to third in the sixth when Meadows grounded out but Margot swung at a 99 mph fastball for strike three.
It was the ninth time in 38 games the Rays were held to one or no runs. They were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position.
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