Ben Rice hit two home runs Wednesday night to pull even for the American League lead, powering the New York Yankees past the Tampa Bay Rays 9-2 at Yankee Stadium and closing out the regular-season series on a high note as both AL East rivals turn toward the postseason.
Rice opened the game by driving the first pitch he saw into the right-field second deck, his fourth career leadoff home run, then added a solo shot in the fourth inning for his fifth career multi-homer game. The pair pushed his season total to 41, tying him with Baltimore's Pete Alonso, Houston's Yordan Alvarez and Tampa Bay's own Junior Caminero atop the American League home run leaderboard. Rice finished 3-for-4 with three RBIs and became the 13th player in franchise history to reach 40 home runs in a season.
Ryan McMahon supplied the game's biggest blow, a third-inning grand slam that matched his career high with five RBIs, and George Lombard Jr. added a solo homer of his own as the Yankees piled up nine runs on the night. Gerrit Cole worked 5 2/3 innings for the win, allowing two runs on three hits with eight strikeouts across 105 pitches, and improved to 10-9 with a 3.61 ERA in his first full season back from March 2025 Tommy John surgery. Tampa Bay, resting several regulars ahead of the playoffs, started rookie call-up Mason Englert, who was charged with eight runs over 3 2/3 innings; Cedric Mullins had the Rays' lone home run.
A milestone Rice's manager saw coming
Rice's breakout season has been one of the storylines of the Yankees' year, arriving amid injuries to Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton that thrust more of the offensive burden onto the 27-year-old first baseman. Manager Aaron Boone had predicted in spring training that Rice would finish with 39 home runs — a number Rice has now cleared by two.
It's a cool milestone. It's not something you go into the season really aiming for. You don't really know how it's going to go. But as I was approaching that number, it's definitely something I was hoping to achieve.
Ben Rice, Yankees first baseman
After the second homer, Rice said he sought out Boone in the dugout. "Hey, thanks for inspiring me this year," he told his manager, according to MLB.com's account of the game. McMahon, who has battled inconsistency for much of the year, credited extra batting-cage work for his production down the stretch. Cole, for his part, said simply that his goal all season had been to "come back, get in the rotation and stay in the rotation" after the surgery that wiped out most of his 2025.
Standings settled, seeding still to play for
The result had little bearing on the division race — Tampa Bay clinched its fifth AL East title earlier in the week behind Drew Rasmussen's dominant start and a pair of two-run singles from Yandy Díaz, the franchise's first division crown since 2021. With the division already secured and Tampa Bay resting its roster, Wednesday's game carried more weight for New York, which has clinched a postseason berth of its own and is jockeying for position in the American League Wild Card race. The win was the Yankees' 10th in their last 14 games as they head toward the postseason, which opens with wild-card matchups on September 29.
For Tampa Bay, the loss was a footnote to an otherwise historic week; manager Kevin Cash's club can now use the closing days of the schedule to set its rotation and lineup without urgency. The Yankees close out the regular season on the road before finding out their Wild Card Series opponent and travel schedule this weekend.
