ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The stop sign was up. Austin Wells never saw it, or never heeded it. His mistake put the Yankees on the wrong side of history.
The Yankees catcher had just broken up Drew Rasmussen’s no-hit bid with two outs in the eighth inning Saturday night. He lined a ball down the right-field line at Tropicana Field and kept running.
Third-base coach Luis Rojas signaled him to hold as he rounded second. Wells went anyway. Victor Mesa Jr. threw to Taylor Walls, whose relay to Junior Caminero beat Wells to third.
The inning was over. So, soon after, was Game 1 of the American League Division Series. The Tampa Bay Rays won 1-0, and the Yankees left with one hit.
Manager Aaron Boone did not defend the play. He also did not put the loss on it.
“Just obviously not a good decision there,” Boone said. “But the biggest issue is just Rasmussen shutting us down.”
Wells owned it afterward in a quiet visiting clubhouse. He said a lineup with almost nothing going needed to take a chance.
“You have to take risks, but in that situation, obviously the risk was wrong,” Wells said.
There was a twist in the decision. The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner reported that Wells thought he would have a better chance to score from third on a single.
Kirschner also wrote that Boone almost certainly would have sent in a faster pinch runner, such as Jose Caballero or Anthony Volpe, had Wells stopped at second.
By win probability, the gamble barely moved the needle even if it had worked. Reaching third would have lifted the Yankees’ chances to 22.9%, compared with 21.7% at second.
The Yankees manager framed it as one mistake on a night full of missed chances at the plate. A former Yankees star on national television framed it as something else.
A-Rod’s verdict
Alex Rodriguez, speaking on MLB on Fox after the game, said the play was not the reason the Yankees lost. He said it was the symptom.
“The Wells mistake. Is that the reason that they lost? Probably not. But when you look at the first six months, it’s a dress rehearsal for October. The Yankees are bottom 10 when it comes to baserunners,” Rodriguez said.
He pointed to a regular-season gaffe involving second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. Then he delivered the line aimed squarely at the club’s standards.
“If you’re not accountable April through September, these mistakes are not a surprise,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez did not name Boone. He did not need to. Accountability on the bases is set by the manager and his coaching staff, and the stop sign Wells ran through belonged to Boone’s third-base coach.
Not the first time
Rodriguez has made this case about Boone’s Yankees before.
In August 2025, after a string of baserunning errors against the Miami Marlins, Rodriguez said on Fox that Yankees players were not facing consequences.
“If any one of us made a mistake, we would be sitting our butt right on the bench. I see mistake after mistake, and there’s no consequences,” Rodriguez said then.
Boone pushed back at the time. He defended his clubhouse and its daily preparation.
“I would disagree a little bit with the accountability factor, but the reality is, we’re focused every day on being the best we can be,” Boone said in August 2025.
Fourteen months later, the same criticism returned on a bigger stage, tied to a playoff loss.
Boone’s pattern: defend, don’t discipline
Boone’s answer to calls for punishment has rarely changed. He tends to separate effort from execution and keeps erring players in the lineup.
In July 2025, rookie Jorbit Vivas was tagged out standing up at third after slowing down against the Atlanta Braves. Boone kept him in the game and explained his line.
“I bench when guys don’t run hard,” Boone said.
A month later, he rejected Rodriguez’s call for consequences outright. On Saturday, he again framed the Wells play as a one-off by a player who normally plays it safe.
“There’s mistakes every now and then in aggression. Obviously, that was one. He’s usually a little more risk-averse on the bases,” Boone said.
The notable exception came in August 2024, when Boone pulled Gleyber Torres from a game for failing to hustle out of the box before being thrown out at the plate. That benching was about effort, the one standard Boone has consistently enforced.
The cost of the out
PinstripesNation’s breakdown shows why the play stung more than the numbers suggest.
Wells’ double was the Yankees’ only hit. It also would have been only the second time all night they had a runner in scoring position with a hitter at the plate. The first came in the second inning, when Jazz Chisholm Jr. was stranded at second.
A runner on second with two outs gave the Yankees a chance to bring the tying run home with one swing. Boone had Ryan McMahon due, with a pinch hitter available. The out erased that at-bat entirely.
Boone’s next move
No response from Boone to Rodriguez’s latest remarks had been reported as of Monday morning. Boone has stood by his players’ aggressiveness while calling Saturday’s decision a mistake.
Extra-base gambles carry more weight with a lineup this quiet. In a 1-0 game, the Yankees could not afford to give away a runner in scoring position.
The Yankees trail the best-of-five series 1-0. Game 2 is Monday night at Tropicana Field, where the bases may be watched as closely as the mound.
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