Rays’ second baseman Brandon Lowe takes shot at Yankees

The New York Yankees lost their first series of the 2020 season against the Tampa Bay Rays this past weekend. Falling 4-3 on Sunday evening, the Yankees’ offense went cold after a solid outing from starting pitcher James Paxton.

However, the headlines following the series were not all positive. The Yankees and Rays had entered a bitter chirping contest, even before the series began. Pitcher Blake Snell stated that beating the Yankees was always a bit sweeter than anybody else. While the Bombers should’ve taken that to heart, they lost three of four games against Tampa.

Following the loss on Sunday, Tampa’s second baseman Brandon Lowe shot back of the Yankees for their chirping:

“It’s pretty frustrating to have them think that you’re not able to chirp and say anything back to them. They’ve been doing it the whole time and for us to not be able to do it back, it’s a little childish,” Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe said after the game. “You’ve got to wear it. If it’s going to happen, just wear it.”

“They’ve been chirping the whole weekend and we chirped at them once and they got upset about it,” Lowe said. “That was really the whole thing of it was, they’ve kind of been loud about everything and we did it back and they didn’t like it.”b

After Paxton gave up back-to-back homers in the seventh inning to finish his night, the Rays talked smack to him as he exited the field. Pax gave their bench a nice long stare but didn’t dive into what they were saying.

“I didn’t hear anything specific. I just heard some jawing back and forth,” Paxton said. “Whatever. It’s competition. The guys are fired up. It is what it is.”

Yankees’ manager Aaron Boone spoke about the chirping back-and-forth and why it was more intense than usual.

“Intense series, quiet stadiums, there’s back and forth all the time,” Boone said.

With two rival teams, there’s always going to be hostility. Clearly, the Rays were looking to get into the Yankees’ heads, and it worked. However, the Yankees are still regaining their form and lost star slugger Giancarlo Stanton in the process. They will travel home to Yankee Stadium to take on the Atlanta Braves starting on Tuesday, and it should be ready to dominate once again.