The Yankees did not lose Game 2 of the ALDS to Tampa Bay so much as they handed it over. Four errors, three of them crammed into the first inning, turned a competitive postseason game into a 5-2 defeat on Monday night at Tropicana Field, and New York now finds itself down two games to none in a best-of-five series with its season on the clock.
This was not a shutdown-pitching loss or a cold-bats loss. It was a glove loss, the kind that shows up on the scoreboard before the lineup ever gets a fair shot. Three errors in the opening frame is the sort of stat line that gets flashed on the broadcast graphic and then argued about for a week. Aaron Boone's club has better defenders than it showed, and that's precisely what makes a night like this sting. The Rays didn't have to manufacture much. New York manufactured it for them.
There was still room for a little Tropicana Field weirdness amid the misery. Yankees rookie outfielder Spencer Jones put a towering fly ball off the catwalk in the second inning, only to watch Tampa Bay's Victor Mesa Jr. camp under it in right field for the out. The quirks of that building have been swallowing fly balls and raising eyebrows for decades, and for one inning at least it was the Yankees' turn to be reminded.
Now comes the part of October where history gets cited whether a team wants it or not. Teams have clawed back from 0-2 in a best-of-five before. The 2001 Yankees themselves did it to the Athletics, riding Derek Jeter's flip play in Game 3 to win three straight and advance. That is the needle New York threads now: win Wednesday, then win again, then win a third time, on the road, against a Rays club that has shown no hesitation about pouncing on mistakes.
Game 3 is Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, and the margin for sloppiness just shrank to nothing. Clean baseball, or the season ends at home.