Rays Focused On Defeating Yankees In ALDS, Not Recent Hostilities

Traveling across the continent to play in San Diego should not extinguish the intensity that is the rivalry between the Rays and Yankees.

At least Rays center fielder Kevin Kiermaier does not think so.

“With all the history that we’ve had the last couple of years, it is what it is,” said the three-time Gold Glove winner before his team left St. Petersburg for the West Coast. “I have said it many times, they don’t like us, we don’t like them and it’s going to continue to stay that way.” 

The teams have engaged in their fair share of turmoil over the years. Emotions raged during the recently-completed and abbreviated regular season when brushbacks, hit batters and chatter going back and forth between the dugouts were common. 

That is saying something given the lack of fans and energy created by them in Yankee Stadium and Tropicana Field. It just underscores the amount of tension that has built between the clubs, tension that bubbled to the surface on September 1 in the Bronx.

With two outs in the ninth and the Yankees up by two, Aroldis Chapman delivered a 101-mph fastball that thankfully missed the noggin of a ducking Mike Brosseau.

The benches emptied and in his postgame press conference Rays manager Kevin Cash noted that he has “a whole damn stable of guys who throw 98 miles per hour” and that the Yankees’ handling of the situation was one of “poor judgement, poor coaching.” 

The teams concluded their two-game series and season series, which saw the Rays win eight of 10, without incident the following night. (Though there was a delay when a drone was spotted flying above Yankee Stadium.)

A month has passed and the stakes are much higher this time around as the teams share a hotel in the bubble of Southern California. As such, Tampa Bay’s focus is on winning the best-of-five series and advancing to the ALCS for the second time in their 23-season history and first time since 2008.

“I think everything that happened in New York hopefully is in the past,” said Brosseau, who memorably (at least in the Tampa Bay region) homered in the first inning to trigger a 5-2 win the night after avoiding Chapman’s delivery. “As far as having anything carry over from past experiences, at least from our end, I think we put it in the past and our focus is pretty much getting past this round and moving on.”

Tampa Bay arrived at this point in impressive fashion. A 40-20 regular season that was the American League’s best and resulted in the Rays clinching the league’s top seed in the playoffs, was followed by a thorough two-game sweep of the Blue Jays in the wild card series.

It was thorough in that pitching, defense and timely hitting were on display as the Rays outscored Toronto 11-3 in the two games. They played error-free ball and squelched potential rallies by flashing the leather. They received exceptional starts from Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, with the 27-year-olds picking up their first-career postseason wins. 

As is typical of the Rays, contributions were most timely. In the clinching Game 2, right-handed slugger Hunter Renfroe, who hit .156 in the regular season and even less (.146) against lefties, blasted a second-inning grand slam off Toronto starter and southpaw Hyun Jin Ryu. The slam gave Tampa Bay a 7-0 lead in what would be an 8-2 win.

Renfroe’s shot came six batters after catcher Mike Zunino, who hit .147 in the regular season and .047 against lefties (1-for-22), looked like Johnny Bench in launching a two-run homer off of Ryu to give the Rays a 3-0 lead. 

It is such contributions that will be needed to keep the momentum rolling for a team that enters the series having won six straight and 11 of 13.  

“We played good at the end of the year and got where we needed to be from a pitching standpoint,” said Cash. “Now it is about trying to ride that wave of momentum and these guys do an unbelievable job of creating that.” 

With Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton having returned to the Yankees’ lineup, Cash will again need effective starts out of Snell and Glasnow, the scheduled Game 1 and Game 2 starters, respectively. Charlie Morton is slated to start Game 3.

If anything flares up along the way, the Rays’ sixth-year manager expects his team to take care of whatever is thrown (pardon the pun) at them.

“I think our players have shown time and time again that they handle whatever outside factors are present,” he said. “They handle their business on the field really, really well and our focus is going to be to find a way to win a series against a very good team that has gotten healthier of late.”

The curtain rises in Petco Park on Monday night.