The Yankees lost a tough one on Friday night, as they failed to score more than a Ben Rice solo shot against old nemesis Walker Buehler, and while Max Fried, Will Warren, and David Bednar admirably went toe-to-toe with a fierce Padres bullpen, it wasn’t enough. A 2-1 lead in the 10th vanished on one mighty swing of the bat by Luis Campusano against Paul Blackburn, who entered play with a 1.62 ERA. No shade at the pitching in this one, the offense just had to do more early on with Buehler. He’s better
than he was in his nightmare 2025 with Boston, but not that much better.
Here’s what else was afoot around the Junior Circuit on Friday. The loss was costly.
Tampa Bay Rays (84-57) 7, Texas Rangers (70-72) 6
Texas helped New York gain a half-game on the Thursday offday by blanking Tampa Bay 6-0, but six runs weren’t enough for the Rangers to be of any use on Friday. The Rays jumped back to four games ahead of the Yankees, doing most of their damage against former top prospect Kumar Rocker in a bulk relief appearance. Ezequiel Duran briefly gave Texas a 1-0 lead in the second, only for Tampa Bay to counter with six unanswered runs between the third and the fifth. Jonathan Aranda and Richie Palacios both hit solo shots, and in the fifth, Aranda sandwiched a double between two-baggers from Yandy Díaz and Junior Caminero.
Victor Mesa Jr. also had an RBI knock in the fifth as Tampa Bay’s lead grew to 6-1.
Give credit to the Rangers’ No. 9 hitter, catcher Elias Díaz. He is the primary reason why the Rays had to sweat this one out late. In the seventh, Texas drove Nick Martinez from the game with a one-out walk from Jake Burger and an Evan Carter single. Garrett Cleavinger entered, walked Cody Freeman to load the bases, and then coughed up a game-changing grand slam to Díaz.
As it turned out, the Rays needed the insurance run they got with one down in the ninth. Yandy singled off Trade Deadline acquisition Chase Silseth, Jorge Mateo pinch-ran and stole second, and after Aranda got plunked, Caminero drove in Mateo with a hit to center. Adam Macko then entered and stranded the runners, making it a 7-5 ballgame to begin the bottom of the ninth.
The Rangers had life in the ninth when Bryan Baker issued back-to-back walks to the first two batters; he was forced from the game rather quickly due to illness with his velocity down, too. Tyler Wells had to get the last three outs, and he pulled it off. Pinch-hitter Nicky Lopez bunted the runners into scoring position, Díaz played his fifth run with a sacrifice fly, and Justin Foscue popped up a 2-1 pitch to end it.
Other Games
Boston Red Sox (77-65) 1, Baltimore Orioles (69-73) 0: I don’t know how many of you caught the Chris Sale shutout against the Dodgers a little over a week ago, but it played out in a somewhat-similar manner to this Red Sox/O’s game last night. Drake Baldwin led off that one with a homer off Yoshinobu Yamamoto for the first and only run of the night. Yamamoto was otherwise brilliant but LA never dented home plate against Sale and it was a 1-0 final.
Well, Ranger Suarez didn’t go as deep as Sale and Mickey Gasper homered on the second at-bat of the game rather than the first, but otherwise … pretty close! (Although I suppose Braves/Dodgers didn’t have the same benches-clearing feistiness.) Boston won its second straight one-run game at Camden Yards, with Suarez firing seven shutout frames before Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman slammed the door. The O’s only three at-bats all night with a runner in scoring position, and none resulted in hits. Shane Baz and the Baltimore bullpen did a very nice job, but no cigar. They’re in serious trouble now, losing a game and a half to Cleveland in the Wild Card race in one day, falling to three back. Meanwhile, Boston is 3.5 behind New York for the top Wild Card spot.
Chicago White Sox (74-67) 4, Minnesota Twins (67-74) 1: Chicago’s AL Central lead would be trimmed by half a game due to circumstances beyond their control, but the Pale Hose won their own game against the Twins. Miguel Vargas, Braden Montgomery, and Colson Montgomery all flexed their muscles with blasts off Zebby Matthews, and the White Sox threw shutout ball until the ninth. Vargas and Colson each registered their 30th homers of the season. Incidentally, we have not been tracking the Twins for a moment, but at 4.5 games behind Cleveland for the Wild Card with three teams ahead of them, they are all but toast.
AL Wild Card Rock Fight
Cleveland Guardians (71-70) 7, Detroit Tigers (64-76) 6 [Game 1]: The perhaps-no-longer-Gritty Tigs’ season is utterly lost at this point, so they have to settle for trying to play spoiler for the team that rallied from a record 15.5 games down to swipe the AL Central from them in 2025. And they took a 6-2 lead in Cleveland by beating up on Logan Allen with two-run knocks from Ben Malgeri and Max Clark, as well as a solo shot by Spencer Torkelson. However, the doubleheader matinee turned into The Brayan Rocchio Show. He crushed a game-tying grand slam off Keider Montero in the fourth, and with it still knotted at 6-6 in the ninth, he launched the longest homer of his career to walk it off.
Cleveland Guardians (72-70) 4, Detroit Tigers (64-77) 3 [10 innings] [Game 2]: The Guardos had so much fun walking the Tigers off in the opener that they decided to do it all over again in the nightcap. Once again, Detroit had the early advantage, tallying three off Trade Deadline acquisition Foster Griffin. The Guardians crawled back, and 2024 No. 1 pick Travis Bazzana swatted a two-run homer in the eighth to knot it up at 3-3. Bazzana must have taken notes from Rocchio because he also got to tally the walk-off as well as that game-tying blast. Hunter Gaddis stranded the zombie runner in the top of the 10th with three groundouts, opening the door for Bazzana to end it on a single off Kenley Jansen with Rocchio on third following a pair of stolen bases. Cleveland’s twin bill sweep lifted their Wild Card lead to a game over Toronto.
Toronto Blue Jays (71-71) 9, Kansas City Royals (63-79) 2: Cleveland winning twice with the doubleheader always meant that the Jays would be losing ground of some kind to them in their late Wild Card chase. But they at least limited the damage to a half-game loss. Although old friend/two-time Tommy John surgery recipient Jameson Taillon had to leave with dreaded elbow discomfort, his offense picked him up. Everyone in the starting lineup outside of Charles McAdoo had at least one hit, with Ernie Clement, Alejandro Kirk, and George Springer all delivering RBI doubles.
Houston Astros (73-69) 3, Arizona Diamondbacks (74-68) 1: Not much to touch on from this one because neither of these teams are very interesting. Cristian Javier fired five frames of one-hit, one-run ball, fanning eight, and batterymate Yainer Diaz kicked off the scoring for Houston with a solo shot against Merrill Kelly. The ’Stros tacked on more in the third when Isaac Paredes doubled in Jeremy Peña, and Jose Altuve plated Yordan Alvarez on a sacrifice fly. The Rangers’ loss means that Houston has a fairly comfortable three-game lead, aided by an Astros edge in the head-to-head tiebreaker.
Join the conversation!
Sign up for a user account and get:
- Fewer ads
- Create community posts
- Comment on articles, community posts
- Rec comments, community posts
- New, improved notifications system!
Download the SB Nation app on iOS or Android.
