The Yankees were on the couch on Monday, alongside most of the league, but there were still a couple of notable teams on the docket for them to scoreboard watch. Their biggest challenger for the AL East in the Rays were one of those two, and boy did they get into a barn burner of a game.
Detroit Tigers (23-38) 10, Tampa Bay Rays (36-21) 9
The Tigers have been unequivocably the biggest disappointment of the league in 2026, falling off of a cliff the moment that Tarik Skubal went down with an injury, but they played up to their competition against Tampa.
They started out with a bang in the first inning, getting two singles ahead of Riley Greene’s double to bring them both home for a 2-0 lead, and they tripled that advantage in the third when Dillon Dingler, Kerry Carpenter, and Greene went back-to-back-to-back off of Griffin Jax. Jax lasted until the fourth, and his ERA spiked by over a run after getting hammered in this one.
The Rays had plenty of fight in them still though, and they started clawing back in the fourth inning when Junior Caminero launched a two-run shot to get them on the board. The Tigers tacked on two additional runs in the fifth and sixth via solo homers from Dingler and Hao-Yu Lee, but Tampa answered back with three more in the bottom of the sixth. Brenan Hanifee was brought in to start the frame, but issued back-to-back walks to lead off and then coughed up a slider over the middle to Ryan Vilade who crushed a three-run blast.
Two more pitchers would enter before Detroit got out of that inning, but they came away without any more damage to hold onto an 8-5 lead. After the seventh saw minimal action from both sides for once, Detroit was back at it in the eighth with RBI doubles from Dingler and Carpenter to push the lead back to five. Even here the Rays had an answer, working the bases loaded on three walks in the bottom of the eighth before Nick Fortes doubled home two and Ben Williamson drove home another two on a single — all with just one out. They were then gifted another baserunner with an error on a fielder’s choice, but Jonathan Aranda and Richie Palacios couldn’t come up with the game tying hit.
After rallying this far to pull within a single run, the Rays ran out of gas right near the finish line. Caminero grounded out to start the ninth, and then two straight strikeouts closed the game out. The Tigers walked away with a wild win, and the Yankees moved to within a game of Tampa in the process.
Other Games
Seattle Mariners (32-29) 3, New York Mets (26-34) 2 (10 innings)
Due to the light schedule, the Mariners are our only other team that we care about with a game on Monday, so why not give them the full-game treatment? The Mariners and Mets treated us to the polar opposite of the Tigers-Rays game, featuring low scoring and some quality pitching performances.
The Mets rolled out an opener in Austin Warren to start the game and he got through his first inning swimmingly, but after hitting the first batter of the second passed the baton over to bulk pitcher Sean Manaea. Manaea needed a double play to get out of the second, and Colt Emerson smashed a solo shot in the third inning to put Seattle ahead early, but Manaea settled down from there to give New York five innings of work with just the one long ball blemishing his line.
On the other end, Emerson Hancock got the start for Seattle and was cutting right through the Mets for the first four innings. Not a single Met managed to get on base, but his perfect game bid came to a close in the fifth as Jared Young launched a home run to lead off. Hancock rebounded to strike out the next two batters and get a flyout to end the inning, but he must’ve felt déjà vu in the sixth as Marcus Semien greeted him with another leadoff blast. That made it 2-1 New York, and despite rounding out his night well with three straight outs those two mistake pitches had Hancock on the line for a loss all of a sudden.
The Mariners went to work bailing out their starter though, with Josh Naylor adding to the leadoff damage with a solo shot in the seventh inning. Neither side could get any momentum for a rally in the eighth or ninth, leading us to extra innings. Gabe Speier took the ball with the Manfred runner on board and proceeded to strike out Juan Soto and Mark Vientos to put the pressure on A.J. Ewing to do something. Ewing couldn’t get the job done, popping up to short and giving Seattle the chance to walk this thing off with ease. Patrick Wisdom struck out to make it a little more difficult, but Cole Young lined a single out to left to bring the runner in and start the celebration in T-Mobile Park.
