ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — For three innings, the Yankees looked like a team ready to climb back into the American League East race.
Ben Rice had just launched a three-run homer to left in the third, flipping a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead over the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field on Tuesday night.
Then the fourth inning arrived, and with it the same collapse that has defined New York’s brutal three weeks.
Will Warren unraveled, the Rays surged, and the Yankees limped to a 6-4 defeat that dropped them four games back in the division.
The loss evened the pivotal four-game series and squandered the momentum of Monday’s win. It also extended a slide that has turned a first-place team in mid-June into one of the coldest clubs in baseball, a stretch now measured in franchise futility.
Warren’s fourth inning sinks the Yankees
The trouble started early. Victor Mesa Jr. jumped on a high fastball in the second for a solo home run, and Yandy Diaz followed with an RBI single to put Tampa Bay ahead 2-0.
Rice answered in the third. His opposite-field blast, his team-leading 26th of the season, briefly gave New York the lead and a jolt of life.
It did not last. Warren fell apart in the fourth, serving up an RBI double to Richie Palacios that tied the game, then back-to-back home runs to Hunter Feduccia and Diaz.
The right-hander was charged with six runs on seven hits and two walks across four innings. It was the latest short outing from a rotation that has cracked without Max Fried and Carlos Rodon.
“Sucks,” said Warren. “We all know what’s going on here, right before the [All-Star] break.”
The Yankees kept scratching. Ali Sanchez lifted a sacrifice fly in the seventh, and New York collected 11 hits, reaching double digits for the first time since mid-June. A wide turn by Cody Bellinger, caught off first base in the sixth, killed one rally.
A strikeout record no team wants
For all the traffic, the story of the night was what the Yankees did not do: put the ball in play.
They struck out 17 times against Rays pitching, one night after striking out 17 times in Monday’s win. The two-game total of 34 is a franchise record, topping the previous mark of 30.
The history did not stop there. New York became the first American League team to strike out at least 17 times in back-to-back nine-inning games.
The lack of patience made it worse. The Yankees drew zero walks Tuesday, giving them 34 strikeouts and no free passes over the two games. That made them the first team since at least 1898 to fan 17 or more times with two or fewer walks in consecutive games, according to Stathead’s Katie Sharp.
The 17 punchouts without a walk also tied the most in any game in franchise history, matching a mark last reached on Sept. 10, 1999, against the Boston Red Sox.
Boone stands by the approach
Despite the numbers, manager Aaron Boone refused to overhaul how his lineup operates. He insisted the slumping group was not pressing.
“I’m confident in our approach,” Boone said.
Boone said the team would not tear things down, framing the problem as good players in a bad stretch rather than a broken plan. Asked why the Yankees had drifted from being a tough, situational out, he pushed back on the premise.
“We haven’t gotten away from it. We’re struggling,” Boone said.
He acknowledged the strikeouts are a concern and pointed to better contact as the fix, even as he defended the overall plan.
“I don’t know if it’s approach. I think we got some guys clearly going through it right now and in a little bit of a funk and a little bit in between, coupled with we’re facing good pitching,” Boone said. “But at the end of the day, we got to find a way offensively, especially times when it’s challenging.”
A lineup searching for answers
The players were less forgiving of themselves. Paul Goldschmidt, mired in an 0-for-30 skid, struck out four times for a golden sombrero.
Goldschmidt did not soften the assessment of his own night.
“There’s no excuses,” Goldschmidt said. “I have not played well.”
Jose Caballero, a two-homer hero on Monday, also struck out four times, including a bizarre at-bat in the second when he dropped his bat on a 3-2 pitch that clipped the zone.
Bellinger summed up the group’s frustration.
“That’s a lot of strikeouts,” Bellinger said.
The context is grim. The Yankees have gone 5-14 over their last 19 games and had struck out more than any team in baseball since June 18. Rays starter Ian Seymour added to the misery with a career-high 12 strikeouts.
New York now trails Tampa Bay by four games with two left in the series. The bats show faint signs of waking, but until the strikeouts stop, the Yankees remain a first-place-caliber roster playing like anything but.
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