Rays Get Dirty Again, Beat Yankees

I used to think the problem with the Tampa Bay Rays was their manager, Joe Maddon, whom I've previously described as "a classless thug," prone to planning, or at least approving of, dirty play.

But that seems not to be the case. Since he became the manager of the Chicago Cubs, they haven't been noticeably dirty -- and they've been better than the Rays have ever been.

The Rays, on the other hand...

It's not "part of the culture" in the Tampa Bay area. It's had plenty of big baseball figures not known for dirty play, including Yankee-connected men like Lou Piniella, Wade Boggs and Tino Martinez.

But the Rays? They are a dirty team, and we can't blame it on the former manager. As noted baseball fan Richard Nixon might have said, You don't have Maddon to kick around anymore.

The Yankees used 3 pitchers, none of whom was sharp: CC Sabathia (2 runs on 3 hits and 4 walks in the 1st 5 innings), Jonathan Holder (2 runs in the 6th), and Nestor Cortes Jr. (a recently-acquired Cuban lefthander, 3 runs in the 7th and 8th). Yandy Diaz hit 2 home runs for the Rays, Avisail Garcia 1.

The Yankees didn't do much at the plate. Clint Frazier had an RBI double in the 5th inning, and DJ LeMahieu hit a solo homer in the 6th. That was it. Rays 7, Yankees 2. WP: Yonny Chirinos (5-1). No save. LP: Holder (2-1). The Yankees drop back to a game and a half behind the Rays, and now even winning this afternoon can't put them in 1st place.

And if the poor performance, both hitting and pitching, was the extent of it, it would be disappointing, but not anger-inducing.

The anger came in the top of the 6th, right after LeMahieu's homer, which tied the game at 2-2. Luke Voit was up next, and Chirinos, who had relieved starter Ryan Stanek in the 3rd inning, hit Voit with a pitch.

This is nothing unusual: Pitchers have been hitting the batter after giving up a home run since time immemorial. And when Brett Gardner grounded into a double play, taking Voit off the bases, that should have been the end of it.

It wasn't. The next batter was Gary Sanchez, and Chirinos hit him, too. There was no point to this. If Rays manager Kevin Cash wanted to "light a fire under his team," shouldn't the plunking of Voit have been enough? It certainly looked like it at the time, as the Rays scored 2 runs off Holder in the bottom of the 6th, the difference-making runs in the game.

Part of the objection is where Voit was hit. You want to send a message, you can hit a guy in a spot that probably won't injure him, usually on the back or the leg, with less than your best fastball. He might get bruised, and be in a little pain, but he's not going to go on the Injury List.

Voit was hit on the shoulder. It's the 5th time this season he's been hit with a pitch -- and we're only 1/4 of the way through the season. Only Alex Gordon of the Kansas City Royals has been hit more, a shocking 8.

Voit: "It's frustrating. He can hit me anywhere else. This one is up and in. It's a situation that can be career-ending. He's a sinkerballer. and that was pretty straight."

Sabathia: "It's just the same thing, you hit a home run, and then they throw up and in. It's stupid."

It got worse -- perhaps not intentionally, but the fact that it was Sanchez, who was hit earlier, makes it suspicious. In the bottom of the 8th, Guillermo Heredia was batting, and his backswing hit Sanchez on his catching helmet. In this era of "concussion protocol," Sanchez stayed in the game, but underwent postgame tests.

"Feel good right now," he said, through an interpreter. "Got to wait and see how I feel tomorrow."

If that had been the only incident, I'd be over it, and presume it was an accident. But the Rays? As we say around here, maybe they made it look like an accident.

Cash has some explaining to do. Interestingly, his playing career, which includes the Rays in 2005, also includes time with World Series-winning teams with the Boston Red Sox in 2007 and the Yankees in 2009 -- but he was released on September 5, 2009, and thus wasn't on the Yankees' postseason roster. Maybe he holds a grudge? Maybe he's still got the Sox' cheating mentality?

The series concludes this afternoon. Masahiro Tanaka starts against Blake Snell.

Aaron Hicks could be called back up tomorrow. A lot of people on #YankeesTwitter are looking forward to this, because they're tired of the slump that Mike Tauchman is in. Tauchman did a few jobs for the Yankees, but the return of Hicks could be a big plus.