Yankees swept by Rays after fan interference erases Volpe’s tying homer

The Yankees’ season ended Thursday night at Yankee Stadium. The Tampa Bay Rays won 4-3 to close out a three-game sweep in the American League Division Series, and New York’s title drought has now reached 17 years.

Things went wrong from the start. Playing without injured slugger Aaron Judge, the Yankees were held to a single hit and shut out in the opener, a game in which a baserunning mistake by catcher Austin Wells proved costly. Four errors in Game 2 pushed them to the edge of elimination, as covered in our Game 2 recap.

How Game 3 slipped away

Max Fried gave up a run in the third and another in the fourth, and both times the Yankees answered to tie it. Ryan Vilade had already homered off him. Fried’s 80th pitch turned out to be his last: Victor Mesa Jr. sent it out for a two-run homer that gave Tampa Bay the lead.

Rookie George Lombard Jr. was aboard in the bottom of the sixth when Anthony Volpe turned on a 95.9 mph sinker from right-hander Griffin Jax and drove it 357 feet to left. The umpires ruled it a home run, but replay showed a fan had reached over the wall and interfered with the ball. Volpe was credited with an RBI double instead, and the run that was wiped out proved to be the margin. Wells might have been on base too, had the Rays not won an ABS challenge.

No comeback in the late innings

The inning still had life until Spencer Jones went down swinging for the third out. It was a quiet finish to a night that had started well for him, with a single and then a double his first two times up. After that, no Yankee reached third base. In the eighth, Paul Goldschmidt came off the bench and reached on a throwing error, and Giancarlo Stanton, another pinch hitter, struck out. That was only Stanton’s second postseason at-bat, after strained muscles in both calves had kept him out since April 24. Judge never got that chance. A calf injury kept him off the rosters for both the Wild Card round and the division series.

The final out came in the ninth on a strikeout by leadoff hitter Trent Grisham. Aaron Boone, who just completed his ninth season as manager, again came up short of a championship, and some fans chanted “Fire Boone!” as they headed for the exits.