Old guard Yanks, upstart Rays to meet
The Stable vs. The Savages. Just another way to say that the top-seeded Tampa Bay and the No. 5 Yankees meet in the bestof-five AL Division Series starting Monday at neutral site San Diego.
Tampa Bay players wear blue T-shirts with four horses lined up behind a fence, a reference to Rays manager Kevin Cash declaring “I’ve got a whole damn stable full of guys that throw 98 miles an hour” in response to Aroldis Chapman throwing a 101 mph pitch near Mike Brosseau’s head on Sept. 1.
New York sold “Savages in the Box” shirts for $29.99 each last year, memorializing manager Aaron Boone’s infamous comment on his batters during a profane rant at rookie umpire Brennan Miller in a doubleheader opener against the Rays.
“That’s the entertainment business of it. At the end of the day, it’s series like this that make the statement, not anything else,” Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton said Thursday.
Tampa Bay swept two games from Toronto in the first round for its first postseason series win since 2008. The Yankees took two straight at Cleveland, including a memorable 10-9 victory on Wednesday night that took 4 hours, 50 minutes, the longest nine-inning game in major league history.
The Rays made a declaration against the Yankee during the regular season. New York started 9-3, lost three of four at Tropicana Field, won six straight and then got swept three in a row by the Rays in the Bronx at the start of a seven-game skid. Tampa Bay took two of three on its second trip to New York, finishing 8-2 to win the season series for the first time since 2014.
Hitting coach Marcus Thames was ejected by Vic Carapazza during the second game of a doubleheader split at Tampa Bay on Aug. 8 for chirping from the dugout, and Boone was tossed after he ran out of the dugout to argue. Then came the Chapman pitch to Brosseau on Sept. 1, which earned the closer a three-game suspension that remains under appeal. Both managers were suspended for one game apiece.
Yankees starter Masahiro Tanaka had hit Joey Wendle in the first inning. The next day, New York reliever Ben Heller was tossed for hitting Hunter Renfroe.
“I think everything that happened in New York hopefully is in the past,” Brosseau said. “The way that we pitch, we’re going to attack hard in. That’s the best way to get their hitters out, and that’s what we’re going to do. As far as having anything carryover, past experiences, at least from our end I think we’ve put it in the past and our focused is pretty much getting past this round and moving on.”
Hard feelings date to at least March 2008, when Tampa Bay’s Elliot Johnson ran over Francisco Cervelli during a spring training game, breaking the catcher’s wrist. Three days later, Shelley Duncan’s hard slide with spikes raised into second baseman Akinori Iwamura sparked a benchclearing scrum.
“I don’t expect it to be a factor moving forward,” Boone said. “Obviously there’s been some things that have happened that certainly get played up. I watched highlight shows and people love to talk about it, and understandably.”