The Rays have turned Tropicana Field into a problem for everyone else this season, and the Yankees are the latest team feeling it.
Tampa Bay enters the series finale with a 33-13 home record, a mark that stands out even in a season where the club has played at a high level overall. The Dodgers are next on the list for home wins with 31, but no one has been tougher in St. Petersburg than the Rays.
That home dominance has already put New York in a rough spot. Tampa Bay has taken two of the first three games in the four-game set, with pitching driving the story from the start. The Rays have already piled up 34 strikeouts in Games 1 and 2, making the Yankees the first team to strike out at least 17 times in back-to-back games.
Griffin Jax set the tone with 10 strikeouts in Game 1, then Ian Seymour followed with 11 in Game 2. Shane McClanahan did not make it three straight starting pitchers with double-digit strikeouts, but the Rays’ staff still added 11 more punchouts.
Now Tampa Bay has a chance to do more than just win the series. It can help push the Yankees into another ugly piece of franchise history. As Bob Nightengale of USA Today Sports reported on X, New York is in the middle of a 20-game stretch in which it has scored five or fewer runs, a streak that began after a 3-0 loss on July 8.
That ties the Yankees’ franchise record for the most consecutive games without scoring at least six runs. The absence of three-time AL MVP Award winner Aaron Judge since May 31 has clearly made run production harder, and the source material notes it is easy to imagine the streak would not be in danger if he were in the lineup.
Drew Rasmussen is set to take the mound in the finale, giving Tampa Bay another chance to keep New York’s offense quiet.
The stakes are bigger than the Yankees’ scoring drought, though. A win would push the Rays’ lead in the AL East to six games, and it would also lock up the season series. That would give Tampa Bay the head-to-head tiebreaker over New York, an edge that could matter for seeding later on.
With the All-Star break approaching, that would be a major box for the Rays to check.
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