Austin Wells' brutal blunder costs Yankees in ninth after Anthony Volpe's dramatic homer

Yahoo

14 hours ago

Access the Yankees beat like never before
Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.
Try it free
In a crucial spot, Austin Wells forgot the lesson Little League coaches drill into their players on a daily basis: Always know the number of outs.
As a result, the Yankees catcher made a brutal baserunning blunder in the bottom of the ninth of Wednesday night's 5-4, 11-inning win over the Rays, with the 45,355 at Yankee Stadium still buzzing from Anthony Volpe's game-tying home run moments before.
Wells had lined a one-out single into center field, and Trent Grisham laid a well-placed bunt down the third-base line to advance Wells to second base.
Inexplicably, Wells thought Grisham was the third out of the inning rather than the second and moseyed off the base before getting caught in a rundown between first and second.
If Wells had remained on second, the Yankees would've had a runner in scoring position with two outs and Paul Goldschmidt batting.
The miscue ended any prospect for a ninth-inning Yankees walk-off win, although Ryan McMahon delivered the heroics in the 11th with a walk-off single to plate Jazz Chisholm Jr.
When asked if he thought the Rays faked him out on the play, Wells said he was 'just being an idiot.'
'Very embarrassed and disappointed, for sure,' Wells added. 'You let the guys down when you do that.'
Yankees manager Aaron Boone acknowledged that the team's base coaches had relayed to Wells the number of outs before the play, as is routinely done.
Asked how the mistake took place when Wells had just been made aware of the situation, Boone said: 'I asked the same thing.'
Boone said he didn't see the play live because he was checking on a replay, so he asked Wells what had happened when the player got back to the dugout.
'Obviously, can't happen,' Boone said of the play. 'You make sure with base coaches we're saying the right things. We go through the pitcher, their move, time to the plate, number of outs. Just, what do you say? It can't happen.'
Wells' hit in the ninth was his only knock of the game. He popped out in the seventh, flied out to right in the fifth and struck out swinging in the third, hitting out of the ninth spot.
The 26-year-old was behind the plate to catch Will Warren's impressive six innings of six-hit, one-run ball, and he also threw out a pair of Tampa Bay runners.
Wells, who has spent all three of his MLB seasons with the Yankees, is hitting .212 this year, including a .182 mark in his past 30 games and a .087 average in his past seven.