ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.—The Yankees continued their series at Tropicana Field Saturday, taking on the Rays. The Yankees lost 5-4 to the Rays in walk-off fashion, dropping their fourth straight game.

Max Fried pitched eight innings, giving up three runs.

Max Fried pitched well enough. But that was not enough. He gave up two runs. That was two too many. The sacrifice fly to Aranda he surrendered in the sixth inning was a big one.

After getting the lead back in the 8th, he would surrender the lead once again.

With the way the offense has looked, giving up any runs is super difficult. It’s not fair to say he struggled, because he didn’t, but baseball is a team game, and Fried could not afford to give up runs knowing how bad the offense has been.

Jose Caballero gave the Yankees the lead in the eighth and 10th innings. He gave the Yankees a fighting shot to win this ballgame. Unfortunately, the Yankees were unable to get a lockdown inning tonight.

It was good to see Caballero break out of his offensive slump to start 2026. He had struggled big time before getting those hits.

Those were also the only two hits with runners in scoring position in this game, where the Yankees had multiple opportunities to cash in during the game, but were unable to do so.

The Yankees are still not hitting, and they are not scoring a ton. They had opportunities with runners on base and runners in scoring position, but could not come through with the big hit to break the game open.

This is going to need to change soon. They need to pick it up and pick up their pitching. The at-bats overall were better today, but the next step is to push runs across, which they are not doing at all. It’s getting to the 

“I feel, yeah. I mean, a few of those were Giancarlo, where I thought two of his at bats were really good with runners on in scoring position.” Manager Aaron Boone said after the game. “So, Belli had a really good at that there in the end, with, with Judge out at second. So those things I thought were better where an area we've been struggling. So hopefully those things start to add up for us and we start to see the offense take off a little bit.”

The Yankees will play a day game tomorrow at The Trop, starting at 1:40pm on the YES network. They will look to avoid the sweep in Tampa Bay. The Yankees will send out their rookie sensation Cam Schlittler, opposed by righty Drew Rasmussen.