Rays sweep Yankees with 4-3 Game 3 win as Victor Mesa Jr. homers and fan interference erases tying shot

The Tampa Bay Rays are going back to the American League Championship Series. Victor Mesa Jr. hit a tiebreaking two-run homer off Max Fried in the sixth inning, a fan-interference ruling took a game-tying home run away from Anthony Volpe moments later, and the Rays held on to beat the New York Yankees 4-3 on Wednesday night, Oct. 7, at Yankee Stadium to finish a three-game sweep of the AL Division Series.

The win sends the Rays to the ALCS for the third time in franchise history (2008, 2020 and 2026) and the first time since 2020, MLB.com reported. Game 1 is Monday, Oct. 12, at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg against the winner of the Cleveland Guardians and Chicago White Sox series, which Chicago led 2-1 entering Thursday night's Game 4.

It was also the first time the Rays have swept a postseason series of best-of-five or longer, and the first time the Yankees had been swept in a best-of-five since the 1980 ALCS against Kansas City, according to the Associated Press. Tampa Bay outscored New York 10-5 over three games, and the Yankees hit .130 in the series.

How the series unfolded

The Rays, who went 98-64 to win the AL East and earn the American League's top seed and a first-round bye, never trailed the series. The scores and turning points of the three games are below.

In Game 1, Rasmussen carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning before Austin Wells lined a two-out hit down the right-field line. Wells was thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple. Aranda's 417-foot home run was the only run, Baker closed with a perfect ninth, and the Yankees' single hit was the lowest total in a playoff game in franchise history.

Game 2 turned on New York's defense. The Yankees committed three errors in the first inning, which let Yandy Díaz score the opening run, and two more misplays by shortstop George Lombard Jr. fed the four-run fifth that knocked out Cam Schlittler, MLB.com reported. Palacios capped the rally with a two-run single up the middle before a sellout crowd of 40,226. Freddy Peralta started for Tampa Bay, Ian Seymour recorded nine outs in relief and Baker got the final three. "That's Rays baseball right there," Baker said afterward.

Game 3: Mesa's swing and a ruling from New York

Game 3 was the closest of the three. Aranda's two-out single in the third gave the Rays a 1-0 lead, and Ben Rice answered with a two-out RBI single in the bottom half. Vilade, making his postseason debut, put Tampa Bay back in front with a 340-foot opposite-field homer just over the right-field fence in the fourth.

New York tied it 2-2 in the bottom of the fourth. Volpe's comebacker struck Rays starter Nick Martinez and rolled through for a single, and Spencer Jones followed with a double that scored him. Martinez left after 63 pitches and 11 outs, charged with two runs, and Seymour got four outs behind him.

The decisive swing came with two outs in the sixth. Junior Caminero singled, and Mesa drove a Fried pitch to right-center for a 4-2 lead. According to the AP, it was the first home run Fried had allowed to a left-handed hitter since August 2025. Fried finished with 5 2/3 innings, seven hits, seven strikeouts and four runs, all of them scored with two outs.

Mesa told reporters it was the moment "that you want to live when you're growing up." The 25-year-old outfielder defected from Cuba in 2018 at 16, signed with the Miami Marlins and was designated for assignment by Miami just before spring training this year before the Rays traded for him, the AP reported. "Look where I am now," he said.

The fan-interference call

In the bottom of the sixth, Volpe drove a two-out pitch from reliever Griffin Jax toward the left-field wall with Lombard on first. It was initially ruled a game-tying two-run homer, but several fans reached out as the ball arrived, and replay showed one fan reaching beyond the fence and deflecting it as Mesa tracked it in left field.

MLB said the replay official "definitively determined the spectator interfered with the ball over the field of play," and concluded the ball would neither have left the park nor been caught. Volpe was awarded a run-scoring ground-rule double, Lombard scored to make it 4-3, and Jax struck out Jones on three pitches to strand the tying run at second. Security and police escorted the fan from the stadium, and some fans threw objects onto the field, causing a brief delay.

Both dugouts largely agreed with the ruling. Mesa said he might have been able to reach the ball himself, and Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, "I thought they got it right."

Jax finished two innings. Kevin Kelly struck out pinch-hitter Giancarlo Stanton in the eighth, and Baker struck out Trent Grisham for the final out. That made Baker the first pitcher with three saves and no hits allowed in a three-game postseason sweep, according to the AP.

Kevin Cash's lineup bet against Fried

Rays manager Kevin Cash used the same batting order and defensive alignment in Games 1 and 2, then changed it for the left-handed Fried. The Tampa Bay Times reported that Vilade, a right-handed hitter who handles lefties well, started in right field, Mesa moved to left, and speedy Chandler Simpson came out of the lineup. Mesa, a left-handed hitter, batted cleanup after hitting .333 against lefties in the regular season, nearly 100 points better than against right-handers.

Both changes paid off: Vilade and Mesa accounted for both Rays home runs and three of their four runs. When Mesa lingered to watch his homer, Cash waved and pointed him toward first base, later explaining that he did not want to provoke the Yankees. "The last thing we need to do is ignite a really great team over there," he said.

What it means for Tampa Bay

The sweep is the Rays' first postseason series win since the 2020 ALCS, when they beat Houston in seven games. Tampa Bay reached the World Series in both of its previous ALCS seasons and is still looking for its first title. Almost no national analysts expected this run: preseason projections widely picked the Rays to finish last in the AL East.

The payroll gap made the result even more striking. The Yankees opened 2026 with MLB's third-highest payroll at $303 million, while the Rays ranked 26th at $91 million, the AP reported. New York played the series without Aaron Judge, who strained a calf on Sept. 16. Boone called it "a broken clubhouse" after the game.

Home games back at Tropicana Field

The ALCS will open at Tropicana Field, which the Rays reoccupied this season after Hurricane Milton tore apart its roof in October 2024. The team played all of 2025 at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, the Yankees' spring training park, while St. Petersburg repaired the dome. The Rays came back on April 6, 2026, beating the Chicago Cubs 6-4 before a sellout crowd in a building with a new roof, new turf and restored air conditioning. The team's longer-term future is tied to a proposed ballpark in Tampa on the Hillsborough College campus.

What's next: ALCS schedule

The Rays will have home-field advantage against either Cleveland or Chicago. The White Sox could clinch in Thursday's Game 4 at Rate Field; a Guardians win would force a Game 5 in Cleveland. Here is the ALCS schedule as published by the Rays and reported by WUSF, with start times to be announced.

The series will air on TBS and truTV and stream on HBO Max, with radio on WDAE (95.7 FM and 620 AM). Asked how the Rays would approach the next round, Cash said: "The exact same."