YANKS-RAYS AT CITI FIELD

Hurricane Irma forces crucial series out of Florida and into Queens starting Monday:

ARLINGTON, Texas — The Yankees will be playing in Queens next week. They just won’t be facing the Mets.

MLB has decided to move the Bombers’ Monday through Wednesday series with the Rays from Tropicana Field to Citi Field due to the threat of Hurricane Irma.

Tampa will be the home team. The Mets tickets for the threego announced that game series will on sale on their website Saturday morning at 10 a.m. The $25 tickets are available at mets. com/irma. Remember to take the 7 train, not the 4 train, if you do end up attending. The teams will play at 7:10 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday and 1:10 p.m. on Wednesday. “It’ll be a little odd playing at a neutral site,” Brett Gardner said. “We’d much rather be going to Tampa and playing there and not dealing with the hurricane. It’s just a bad situation and hopefully we’ll try to make the best of it and hopefully the storm takes it as easy on us as it can.” There had been a lot of uncertainty surrounding the series with Irma looming. Joe Girardi had discussed several options over the last few days. There was talk that the series could still be played in Tampa, with a doubleheader on Wednesday and the other game being made up as part of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. There was also talk the series could shift to Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Field. “I think it makes a lot of sense,” Girardi said. “It’s easy travel in a sense for both teams. They’re coming from Boston. I know Tampa doesn’t want to lose home games, but I think there was some risk that maybe we wouldn’t play until Wednesday, and then you’d have a doubleheader and probably a doubleheader at our place, so I think baseball made a good decision.” The Yankees will face Tampa in the Bronx Sept. 26-28, but it never seemed like flip-flopping the series was an option. “I think it’s going to be really odd,” Girardi said. “Because you won’t hear the ‘Let’s Go Mets!’ and ‘Let’s Go Yankees!’ chants. But it should be interesting, and in a sense it’s a neutral ballpark for both teams.” The Bombers certainly aren’t complaining about waking up in their own beds during that stretch. They will play in the Big Apple for 10 straight games. Now, they only have “true” road games remaining in Texas against the Rangers through this weekend and then three games against the Jays at Rogers Centre from Sept. 22-24. The Yankees entered play on Friday 2.5 games up on the top spot in the AL wild card race. “I think it’s a good thing that we’ll be able to stick to our schedule and play every day and not have to have any doubleheaders or be in limbo,” CC Sabathia said. “To have a spot to play is good.”