David D’Annibale, Staff Writer |
The New York Yankees’ season has finally ended after losing to their division rival, The Tampa Bay Rays, in the final game of the series. The Bronx Bombers couldn’t get their offense going in the final game, which led to them being eliminated. Once again, the Yankees will not get an opportunity to play in a World Series as they haven’t made it since winning the title against the Philadelphia Phillies in 2009 . The team will have to wait another year to put an end to their World Series drought which has increased to 11 years. The series between the Yankees and Rays was one of the best series of the playoffs thus far.
The first game of the series started on Oct. 5 and featured both teams’ aces as Gerrit Cole pitched for the Yankees and Blake Snell pitched for the Rays. In the first inning, the Bombers struck first by a sacrifice fly by Aaron Hicks putting them up by one. In the bottom half of the first, the Rays tied it up after Randy Arozarena homered off Cole. The Yankees regained the lead in the third inning after Clint Frazier hit a home run. The lead didn’t last for long as Ji-Man Choi blasted a two-run home run off Cole to give Tampa a 3-2 lead. At the top of the fifth inning, the Bronx Bombers hit two solo home runs, one by Kyle Higashioka and the other from Aaron Judge. The Yankees were able to hold on to the lead for the rest of the game and won 9-3.
In-game two of the series, Devi Garcia opened for the Yankees and Tyler Glasnow started for the Rays. After the first inning, the score was 1-1 after Stanton homered for the Bombers and Arozarena went deep for the Rays. In the second and the third inning, Tampa scored four runs with a pair of two-run home runs from Mike Zunino and Manuel Margot. Trailing by four runs, the Bronx Bombers cut into the Rays lead after Stanton hit his second home run of the game making the score 5-4. The Rays added two more runs in the game and it proved to be enough to hold off the Yankees. The final score of the game was 7-5 and the series was tied at one.
Game three of the series featured Masahiro Tanaka for New York and Charlie Morton for Tampa Bay. Throughout the first three innings the game was low scoring as the Rays and the Bombers were tied at one. However, the game took a turn in the fourth inning for Tanaka as the Rays scored three runs to regain the lead. In the next inning, the Rays added one more run from a home run by Arozarena extending their lead to four. The Rays added three more in the sixth inning and went on to win the game 8-4.
Facing elimination, the Bombers pitching dominated in game four of the series. Yankees’ pitching combined went nine innings, allowed one earned run and struck out 11 batters in a winning effort. The offense scored five runs with most of the runs coming from home runs. The Bombers forced the series to go to game five and had Cole for the final game.
In the final game of the series, the Bombers offense only scored one run which came in the fourth inning by an Aaron Judge home run. Tampa tied it up in the fifth inning after Austin Meadows homered off Cole. In the eighth inning, the Yankees gave up the lead as Closer Aroldis Chapman gave up a home run to Mike Brosseau. Diego Castiello closed the game for the Rays in the ninth which will send the Rays to the next round to play the Houston Astros.
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