ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The only thing Aaron Boone is going public with regarding who will start the Oct. 3 AL wild-card game is that it won’t be a reliever.
“The three starters we are considering, I would say it will be one of the three,’’ Boone said prior to the Yankees’ 4-1 win over the Rays at Tropicana Field on Monday night, when the manager started reliever Jonathan Holder.
Boone said starting Holder, who worked the first and left, was done to give Luis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka and CC Sabathia each an extra day of rest. And while J.A. Happ is slated to start Friday against the Red Sox in Boston, which would line up the lefty to work on Oct. 3 on regular four days of rest, Boone said that subject is getting far too much attention.
“I think a lot of people have read too much into how Happ is set up right now,’’ Boone said of the veteran lefty, who is 6-0 with a 2.34 ERA in 10 starts as a Yankee. “Happ is very much in the picture as a possibility and one of those good choices I would say we have. How it lines up right now isn’t by design. We are trying to line up guys to win games. Hopefully by the end of the week, we are in position to say this guy will go out and throw a couple of innings.’’
If the Yankees have secured the top wild-card spot, which would mean the game will be played in the Bronx, they could pitch Severino or Tanaka for a few innings against the Red Sox this weekend, which would keep them in play for Oct. 3.
“Hopefully we are in position to tweak it any way we want,’’ said Boone, whose club had a 1½-game lead on the A’s going into Monday night’s action. The A’s played at Seattle on Monday night.
If the Yankees have to win Sunday in Boston on the final day of the regular season to get the wild-card game played at Yankee Stadium, Severino would likely start. That would take the 18-game winner and first-half staff ace out of the wild-card mix.
Boone said “not close’’ when asked Monday how close he was to naming a wild-card starter.
“It’s something we kick around and talk about every day,’’ Boone said. “I could see three or four scenarios playing out. Obviously these are really important games for us. We are playing with that kind of urgency right now and hopefully by the end of the week we can shape it and manipulate it the way we want and make good decisions.’’
Dellin Betances worked a clean eighth but didn’t strike out a batter. That ended a streak of 44 straight games with at least one strikeout, the longest by a reliever in AL history and the third-longest in baseball history.
Sonny Gray came out of the bullpen and got the win, giving up the only run on the Rays’ only two hits and striking out two in two innings. Boone brought in Gray in the third inning hoping to get the game to the back end of his bullpen. So why not start Gray, who has made 23 starts?
“He is not built up and he has pitched out of the bullpen,’’ Boone said of Gray, who has made six relief appearances.
Gray is 2-0 with a 2.93 ERA in six appearances this season as a reliever.
Gray’s most recent start was Sept. 11 against the Twins in Minneapolis, where he took a 10-8 loss and gave up three runs (two earned) and four hits in three innings. Gray’s start before that was on Aug. 25 in Baltimore when he provided 6 ¹/₃ innings of shutout pitching in a 5-1 win. In between starts, Gray gave up a run in four innings out of the bullpen on Sept. 2 against the Tigers.
Andrew McCutchen’s homer in the third inning was his 20th of the season. It’s the eighth straight year McCutchen has hit at least 20 homers.
Lefty reliever Stephen Tarpley was among a group of Yankee pitchers stretching in left field while the Rays took batting practice and narrowly missed getting hit by a line drive while on the ground. Tarpley pitched the second inning, striking out one and allowing no base runners.
“You have to pay attention,’’ Tarpley said.
At 6:34 p.m. while the Tropicana Field ground crew was preparing the playing surface for the game, the lights went out after a rocking round of thunder and lightning outside. Emergency lights came on so the stadium wasn’t in complete darkness. Full power was restored and the game started on time at 7:10.
