Man, woke up super early today buzzing about last night’s Rays-Yankees brawl. Knew it was gonna be a wild one. Grabbed my cold brew and fired up the laptop right there at the kitchen counter while the wife was still sleeping.
Step 1: Hunting Down The Raw Numbers
First thing: needed the actual player stats from the big game. Hit MLB’s official site – gotta get the source stuff, ya know? Scrolled straight to the box score tab. Clicked through each inning summary. Felt like digging for treasure, honestly. Copied the key batting lines for starters from both sides. Pitchers? Definitely needed those innings pitched and strikeouts. Yanked it all into my messy Google Sheet – my go-to for this junk.
What I Looked For:
- Batting: Hits (H), Runs Batted In (RBI), Stolen Bases (SB)
- Pitching: Innings Pitched (IP), Earned Runs (ER), Strikeouts (K)
- Any weird notes – errors, key double plays.
Step 2: Sorting The Mess Out
Okay, raw data dump looked like alphabet soup. Needed to make sense of it. Made a separate sheet tab just for comparisons. Sorted the hitters by hits first. Man, Randy Arozarena popped right off the page for Tampa – dude was everywhere! Then flipped it to RBIs. Aaron Judge… yeah, typical Judge stuff, big hit when it counted. For pitchers, sorted by innings pitched. Wanted to see who carried the load. Cory Kluber for Tampa went deep – surprised me a bit. Gerrit Cole’s strikeout number? Always nasty. Highlighted the big differences:
- Rays stole way more bags – Yankees looked slow.
- Yankees pitchers racked up more Ks overall.
- A couple costly errors changed an inning completely.
Step 3: The “So What?” Part
Got the numbers looking pretty now. Time to figure out why it actually mattered. Why did the Rays win? Yeah, Judge homered, but Tampa played small ball hard. Those steals? Put guys in scoring position constantly. Put tons of pressure on the Yankees defense, made ’em rush. Saw that in the box score with an error when a runner was threatening. Also, Kluber eating innings saved Tampa’s bullpen big time. Cole’s strikeouts are awesome, but Tampa fouled off a bunch of tough pitches, ran his count up, got him out earlier. That stuff wins close games.
Real Eye-Openers:
- Speed kills, especially against teams that aren’t quick.
- Making a starter work hard early pays off late.
- One or two fielding blunders can flip the whole game.
Wrapping It Up
Look, stats aren’t everything. But digging into that box score after watching the game? It clicks. Seeing how the Rays manufactured runs through speed and patience against Cole’s firepower… that tells the real story. The numbers back up what made the game feel tense. Next time these two play, you bet I’ll be glued to the screen watching for those stolen base attempts and pitch counts right from the first inning. Stats just make you appreciate the battle even more. Coffee’s cold now, but totally worth it.
