Drew Rasmussen carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning at Tropicana Field on Saturday night, and even after it disappeared, the Rays had more than enough. Tampa Bay beat the Yankees 1-0 in Game 1 of the American League Division Series on the back of eight innings of one-hit pitching from the best starter nobody outside Florida wants to talk about.
The line was eight innings, one hit, no runs, two walks and 10 strikeouts. Rasmussen retired 15 Yankees in a row at one stretch and piled up 23 swinging strikes, a career high, moving between cutters, changeups and two different fastballs instead of living on one pitch. “I’m a pretty big believer that it comes down to two things. Preparation and execution,” he said.
Austin Wells broke up the no-hit bid with a double down the right-field line in the eighth, and then got himself erased. Victor Mesa Jr. relayed the ball to Taylor Walls, Walls threw to Junior Caminero at third, and Wells was tagged out trying to take the extra base, which ended the inning. Bryan Baker pitched the ninth for the save.
One Aranda Swing Was The Whole Game
Jonathan Aranda hit a solo home run to right-center off Gerrit Cole in the third, and that was the entire scoring for both teams. Cole pitched well enough to win on most nights: five innings, one earned run, one walk, five strikeouts. Saturday was not most nights.
What should worry New York is where the silence came from. The Yankees went 93-68, then buried Boston in the wild card round by 9-0 and 9-2, outscoring the Red Sox 18-2 across two games at Yankee Stadium. That same lineup managed one hit in Game 1.
The Rays Earned This Spot
Tampa Bay finished 98-64, the best record in the American League, clinched the AL East on September 22 and skipped the wild card round on a bye. The Rays did that with a payroll the Yankees could cover with two or three contracts, which is worth remembering every time this series gets framed as an upset in progress.
Game 2 is Monday at 8 p.m. ET, back at Tropicana Field, and it has not been played yet. Cam Schlittler starts for New York against Freddy Peralta, which means the Yankees have to solve the Rays’ second-best starter in the same building where they just got one hit. Tampa Bay gets both of its best arms at home before this thing ever travels north.
My Call: Rays In Four
Home teams that win Game 1 of a Division Series have gone on to win the series 42 times in 56 tries, roughly 75 percent. That number is not magic, but it describes something true about a best-of-five: there is no time left to fix a problem once you have one.
New York’s problem is simple to state and hard to solve. The Yankees either beat Peralta on Monday or they go home needing three straight wins against a staff that just held them to a single hit. Their answer is the offense, which is the correct answer in theory and produced nothing at all on Saturday.
So, Rays in four. Tampa Bay takes one of the next two at the Trop, gives a game back in the Bronx once the New York bats finally show up, and closes it out there. Rasmussen will not need to pitch again in this series. The American League’s No. 1 seed looked exactly like a No. 1 seed, and the Yankees spent nine innings proving that 93 wins and a wild card sweep do not travel as well as a bye and an ace.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
