{"id":409046,"date":"2026-09-24T07:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T07:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/409046\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T07:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T07:28:15","slug":"yankees-beat-rays-9-2-a-day-after-tampa-bay-clinches-al-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/409046\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees beat Rays 9-2 a day after Tampa Bay clinches AL East"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Ben Rice hit his 40th and 41st home runs, Ryan McMahon added a grand slam while matching his career high with five RBIs and the New York Yankees beat the Tampa Bay Rays 9-2 on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n<p>Gerrit Cole (10-9) allowed two runs and three hits in 5 2\/3 innings with eight strikeouts and three walks. The 2023 AL Cy Young Award winner had a 3.61 ERA and 131 strikeouts over 22 starts and 127 innings following his <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/gerrit-cole-yankees-elbow-surgery-return-cac291333c068e347d8c929f6e2c871b&#039;\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">return in May<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/gerrit-cole-tommy-john-surgery-b18be137cd600253b9b2880addb4297d\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tommy John surgery<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A day after <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/rays-clinch-al-east-yankees-a4245768dc187cf28d4910c496219c74\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tampa Bay clinched the AL East title<\/a>, Rice hit the first pitch of the first inning from Mason Englert (0-4) into the right-field second deck for his fourth career leadoff homer and second this season.<\/p>\n<p>Rice added a solo drive in the fourth for his fifth career multihomer game and finished with three hits. He is tied for the AL home run lead with Baltimore&#8217;s Pete Alonso, the Rays&#8217; Junior Caminero and Houston&#8217;s Yordan Alvarez.<\/p>\n<p>George Lombard Jr. also homered for the Yankees and Cedric Mullins went deep for the Rays.<\/p>\n<p>New York is assured of hosting a best-of-three AL Wild Card Series starting Tuesday, likely against Boston. The winner will face the Rays in a best-of-five Division Series.<\/p>\n<p>McMahon had an RBI single in the second and boosted the lead to 7-0 in the third with his third career slam.<\/p>\n<p>Englert, brought up to allow Rays starters extra rest ahead of the playoffs, allowed eight runs and nine hits in 4 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n<p>Rays manager Kevin Cash said left-hander Shane McClanahan won&#8217;t recover in time for the Division Series but left-hander Garrett Cleavinger and right-hander Tyler Wells are possibilities. All three have forearm tightness.<\/p>\n<p>Up next<\/p>\n<p>Yankees RHP Cam Schlittler (14-6, 1.94 ERA) and Rays RHP Freddy Peralta (9-11, 4.56) start Thursday night&#8217;s series finale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Ben Rice hit his 40th and 41st home runs, Ryan McMahon added a grand&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2205,28,115,29645,110,135,3815,137,136],"class_list":["post-409046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-associated-press","tag-florida","tag-news","tag-professional-baseball","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}