Hour 1: An Absolute Embarrassment

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And a good afternoon, everybody. This is indeed The Michael Kay Show. We thank you for joining us on this Tuesday, October 6th, 2026 Me and you for two. Those are the rules of engagement. It's the fastest moving two hours in Sports Talk Radio, and that's because of you, my co-host, the membership number, 1-800-9193. 1-800-919-3776, 1-800-919-3776.

We have so much to talk about today. A lot of stuff going on in sports, but we are going to accentuate what happened in St. Petersburg yesterday. Very plainly put, it was an abject, embarrassing performance by the New York Yankees from the very first batter that Tampa Bay sent up, which led to an E5 by Ryan McMahon. I have, in my 40 years of covering the Yankees, 35 as a broadcaster, 5 before that as a newspaper writer, I have never seen them come up as short as they did in a big situation. Again, an abject embarrassment, and I know that over these next two hours, I'm supposed to make sense out of what happened yesterday. It's hard to explain the inexplicable coming up so small in such a big situation. I don't understand it. I have no idea. Officially, there were four errors given to the Yankees, officially. But if you watch the game, there were probably eight or nine mistakes, you know, on top of the four. So that would say four or five more mistakes that you just can't do. I've said this from the very beginning of the series. You cannot give this team more than 27 outs. Now, for the Yankees, because Tampa Bay didn't have to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning, it was 24 outs. So you say that if you were watching the game, they probably gave Tampa Bay 30 to 32 outs when they should have given them 24 And if the Yankees had won the game, or at least had Tampa Bay bat in the bottom of the ninth inning, then it would have been something like 35 outs. There's no way you beat that team. There's no way. And there's no explanation for it. There's just not. Now, Ryan McMahon, who always seems to finish in the top four or five in the Gold Glove voting, has not won a Gold Glove, and he's had a bad year defensively. He just has. And I think he was minus three defensive run save. He misplayed that first ball, and then all hell broke loose. Then I give Cam Schlutler credit pitching around three errors and allowing just one earned run. The whole thing could have just spun out of control from there. So it was one nothing raise, and then Ben Rice hits a home run in the fourth inning, and the Yankees have a chance to take control of the series. And in the top of the fifth inning, Cody Bellinger hits a long drive to just to the right of dead center field with the bases loaded in two outs. And he drives Johnny DeLuca back to the end of the warning track, not quite up against the wall, and that's the final out. And that's the final stand for the Yankees in that game. Because in the bottom of the inning, that's when the Rays broke it open. The drive by Cody Bellinger would have been a grand slam in 12 ballparks in the big leagues. Tropicana Field is not one of them, and neither is Yankee Stadium. It would have fallen short at Yankee Stadium too. So the one real opportunity they had, they knocked Freddie Peralta out of the game. They went to the bullpen, and somehow the bullpen held it. The Yankee offense in this series, missed two home runs by Ben Rice. He had two home runs yesterday. That's it. That's the Yankee offense. So there's a lot of blame to go around. And I'm sorry, Cam Schlittler did not have his greatest stuff. He is not to be blamed. When you make a pitcher work like that, when his stuff might be just a tick off after 117 pitch outing against the Red Sox, you can't blame him. You can't blame him. There's plenty of blame to go around.