Saturday, 4 a.m.
One pitch, and all the good was undone.
One pitch, and the New York Yankees took the foot of the Tampa Bay Rays off of their necks.
One pitch, and none of it mattered anymore. Not the diving catch by Randy Arozarena. Not the three-run home run from Josh Lowe. Not the 13 hits.
Jason Adam was welcomed to the game in the eighth inning by Anthony Rizzo, who hit his second home run on the first pitch he saw from Adam, giving the Yankees a 6-5 comeback win.
It snatched victory from the hands of the Rays, who had survived a start by Gerrit Cole and held a 5-4 lead on Lowe's ninth homer of the year. The normally solid bullpen gave the lead back, however, on a walk by Kevin Kelly and the gopher ball served up by Adam.
It was a tough time to get a bad result from the bullpen, since the Rays put pitcher Drew Rasmussen on the 60-day disabled list earlier in the day.
"We kind of had it matched up the way we wanted," Rays' manager Kevin Cash said. "Rizzo is a good player. We’ve seen it time and time again. He rises to the occasion and he certainly did tonight. It looked like he might have been mindful of what was coming."
The Rays kept it close I the seventh inning when Arozarena made a diving catch toward the left field line to rob Jose Trevino.
The Rays then came back on singles by Harold Ramirez and Isaac Paredes , setting up Lowe's homer. The Rays went on to get runners on first and third, but with one out and Jose Siri on third,Wander Franco struck out with a chance to pad the lead.
The Rays and Yankees play again today at 1:05 p.m. at Yankee Stadium. Shane McClanahan will take his 7-0 record to the mound against Nestor Cortez.