[Art Deco]

May 23: Sent OF Brandon Marsh to AAA Durham on a rehab assignment.

Marsh will probably play 4 games for Durham through the weekend and rejoin the team Monday for the Angels series. He went 0-5 in the Thursday night game and it will be good to get him back. Hunter Bishop, who started like a house afire but has cooled lately, will go back to Durham.

Game 1: After suffering several heartbreaking losses over the past 2-3 weeks, it was time for the Rays to deal one out to somebody else and they came back with runs in the bottom of the 8th and 9th to beat the Yankees and Gerrit Cole 3-2. Daniel Lynch started and gave up 2-out RBI singles to Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres in the 1st and 3rd to fall behind 2-0 but pitched well overall and ended up 6.1 7 2 2 1 9 with the 9 strikeouts being a season-high. Meanwhile Cole was a tough customer for the Rays hitters as usual, but Austin Meadows broke through with a 2-out RBI triple in the 3rd however Rafael Devers couldn't bring him home. And 2-1 is where we stayed for most of the game. Lynch gave up a 1-out hit in the 7th before being pulled, but Ian Hamilton came in and got Raudy Read to hit into a double play. With two lefties due up to start the 8th, Will Smith got the call and retired both before having to leave with a sprained ankle that will keep him out 4 days. Maybe it was for the best as Torres was due, and Mitch Keller came on and struck him out and set the Yankees down in the 9th. Meanwhile the Rays tied it in the 8th on singles by Hunter Bishop, Vidal Brujan and Meadows, and then in the bottom of the 9th Alec Bohm led off the inning by doubling off Cole and he went to third on a Seth Beer single. Nick Schnell then hit a medium-deep fly ball to CF Aaron Hicks, who has a cannon arm and despite it being only the first out I gambled and sent Bohm, who scored to provide the walk-off win. Keller picked up his first Rays win as he's been a multi-inning bullpen beast since a rough first few appearances, now with 31 Ks in 19 1/3 innings.

Game 2: Another tense, hard-fought, low-scoring game yielded another Rays victory as Dustin May and 3 relievers combined on a 2-hit 2-0 shutout of the Yankees. May went 6 2 0 0 1 9 on 105 pitches and like Daniel Lynch yesterday, had a season-high 9 Ks. Jose Alvarado went 1 1/3 and struck out 3 on only 13 pitches, Nick Anderson got the other two outs in the 8th around a walk, and Jasseel De La Cruz got the Yanks 1-2-3 in the 9th in his first save situation after being anointed the closer, although it's his 3rd save of the year overall. The offense, such as it was, came from a Vidal Brujan single to lead off the game, followed by his MLB-leading 20th steal and a Rafael Devers RBI single. In the 3rd Austin Meadows went the opposite way for HR #10 and that was all the Rays could muster against Shawn Semple, who's given them trouble in the past and went the full 8 innings today. May improves to 5-2, 3.35 as the Rays have had more success lately with the back of their rotation (Lynch, May) than the front (Buehler, Manning, Glasnow).

Game 3: This game looked a lot like the first two in the series, going 1-1 to the 7th in a duel between Walker Buehler and Luis Severino. Buehler blinked first, giving up Giancarlo Stanton's second solo homer of the game to put the Yankees up 2-1 in the top of the inning, but Severino blinked a lot more in the bottom and the Rays put up 5 runs to go on to a 7-4 win and series sweep of the slumping Yankees, who have dropped 9 straight. The Rays, who had scored their only run at the time in the 5th on a Spencer Torkelson sac fly, started the rally with one out when Torkelson singled, Chris Betts got his first major league hit sending Tork to 3rd, and then Vidal Brujan tripled them both home. After a Wander groundout to 3rd that Brujan couldn't score on, Austin Meadows blooped a single to center to make it 4-2, and then Rafael Devers capped a 4-4 day with a 2-run HR (#6) off Yankee reliever Austin Brice to make it 6-2. Buehler left with an excellent 7 4 2 2 1 8 line on 116 pitches, and with a 4-run lead and lefties due up, yours truly made the decision to save Alvarado and go with Asa Lacy instead which kind of backfired. Lacy struck out former Ray Brandon Lowe but gave up a couple of hits and a walk to load the bases, and then Nick Anderson, after striking out Gleyber Torres for the 2nd out and now facing Stanton as the tying run at the plate, hit Stanton to force in a run and then gave up a single to Greg Deichmann to score another run but Torkelson threw Josh Smith out at home to end the inning and it was 6-4. In the bottom of the 8th Betts followed up his first MLB hit with his first MLB extra-base hit and RBI, doubling in Nick Schnell who had a leadoff walk and providing some insurance. Jasseel De La Cruz was then perfect again with a pair of whiffs for save #4 and the Rays got a much-needed series sweep.

Team record: 30-16. Next up: the homestead continues with 4 games against the Angels.

BREAKING NEWS: After the game the Yankees announced the firing of manager Aaron Boone and GM Brian Cashman, the end of an era.