{"id":354251,"date":"2026-09-23T03:52:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T03:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/354251\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T03:52:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T03:52:28","slug":"yankees-lose-al-east-to-rays-with-game-2-defeat-in-doubleheader-split","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/354251\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees lose AL East to Rays with Game 2 defeat in doubleheader split"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Yankees will not accomplish the chief goal of their regular season, which will make their chief goal of the postseason harder to accomplish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That Aaron Boone\u2019s group will have to play a best-of-three series in the wild-card round \u2014 almost certainly against the Red Sox in The Bronx and almost certainly without Aaron Judge<\/a> \u2014 is discouraging for a club that sought to avoid the same precarious position that it encountered last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That Boone\u2019s group was forced to watch the Rays clinch \u2014 and celebrate the AL East title that the Yankees made it their mission to win \u2014 on The Bronx grass sure must have added some irritation and some motivation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One year later, the Yankees will enter the postseason the same way: through the dreaded back door that adds to their World Series degree of difficulty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Rays celebrated a 6-1 nightcap victory and division title Tuesday night at the Stadium, where a 2-0 Yankees matinee win<\/a> simply delayed the inevitable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Game 157, Tampa Bay (96-61) won its first AL East championship since 2021, and the Yankees (90-67) wrapped up the top wild card for a second consecutive season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ben Rice walks to the dugout after striking out in the third inning of the Yankees\u2019 6-1 loss to the Rays in Game 2 of a split doubleheader on Sept. 22, 2026 at the Stadium. Robert Sabo for New York Post<\/p>\n

After Bryan Baker induced a groundout from George Lombard Jr. to end it, Baker raised his arms in triumph, and the Rays began congratulating one another while the Yankees quietly shuffled out of their own dugout.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Max Fried is taken out of the game in the seventh inning of the Yankees\u2019 Game 2 loss to the Rays. Robert Sabo for New York Post<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never good,\u201d said Max Fried, who was not the problem and better than his pitching line suggested \u2014 four runs in 6 \u00b2\/\u2083 innings. \u201cYou don\u2019t want anyone to be celebrating at your stadium.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year it was the Blue Jays who edged out the Yankees (through a tiebreaker), forcing Boone\u2019s crew to sweat out a three-game set against Boston before wilting against that Toronto club, which could arrange its starting pitchers and had home-field advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And so the Yankees were vocal all spring and all season that this year, they expected better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of sucks \u2014 that\u2019s what we were working on all season,\u201d said Jazz Chisholm Jr., \u201cbut it\u2019s not the end goal for us. The end goal is the World Series.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

So amid a campaign with too many lulls, too many notable injuries and not enough players stepping up during those injuries, they will enter October in the same position: likely fighting the Red Sox for a chance at knocking off AL East champions that they could not solve in the regular season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The small-market, penny-pinching Rays did not steal the division but won it decisively. The Yankees had been playing catch-up since June 28 and never caught up. With two more now-meaningless games to play, the Rays have won seven of the 11 head-to-head matchups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously we wanted to push it off if we could. Credit to them,\u201d Boone said on a night Drew Rasmussen flirted with a no-hitter. \u201cThey beat us today. Rasmussen was great, and they\u2019ve put together a fantastic regular season to earn that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ryan McMahon flies out in the third inning of the Yankees\u2019 Game 2 loss to the Rays. Robert Sabo for New York Post<\/p>\n

For a brief glimpse at what has gone wrong this season for the Yankees, consider how they lost the nightcap:\u00a0<\/p>\n

A team that has not hit enough without Judge again<\/a> did not hit enough without Judge, no-hit until the seventh inning against Rasmussen. Heliot Ramos\u2019 double ensured the night might be embarrassing but would not be humiliating.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A team that did not capitalize enough on its excellent starting pitching again did not capitalize enough on its excellent starting pitching. They won the opener behind eight shutdown innings from Carlos Rod\u00f3n, but a slip from Fried in the second game was the only opening Tampa required.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGo beyond the box score with the Bombers\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Yankees by Greg Joyce, exclusively on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

All it took in the third inning was an infield single, a walk, a fly out that advanced both runners and a groundout that scored the go-ahead run. The deficit would grow in the seventh because \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

A team that did not play enough clean baseball again did not play enough clean baseball. With runners on first and third, Taylor Walls pushed a bunt toward first base. Fried pounced, did not believe he had a play on Chandler Simpson at home, and so he looked toward first, where no one covered and thus no out was recorded in what became a three-run frame.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One more regrettable inning that led to the division slipping away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Rays celebrate winning the AL East at Yankee Stadium. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully it\u2019s not the last time we face them,\u201d Fried said in what became a common refrain in the clubhouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to face them, obviously, again,\u201d Ramos added, \u201cand just try to beat them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Yankees will not accomplish the chief goal of their regular season, which will make their chief goal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[34720,20,9,11,10,321,319,25678],"class_list":["post-354251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-max-fried","tag-mlb","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-sports","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}