Rays 1, Yankees 0: Rasmussen Took a No-Hitter into the Eighth

One homer. One hit against him. That was the game.

October 3, 2026 - St. Petersburg - Jonathan Aranda homered to right-center off Gerrit Cole in the third. Drew Rasmussen did not allow a hit until two outs in the eighth. The Tampa Bay Rays beat the New York Yankees 1-0 in American League Division Series Game 1 and lead the series 1-0.

Dome. 72 degrees. First pitch 6:38 p.m. ET. Attendance 40,542. The game lasted 2 hours, 30 minutes. The MLB recap called it Tampa Bay's first playoff win since Game 1 of the 2021 ALDS.

Rasmussen sat behind a table on Friday and told MLB.com pitching comes down to two things: preparation and execution. Saturday he executed for eight innings: one hit, no runs, two walks, 10 strikeouts, 101 pitches, 69 strikes. He is 1-0.

Fifteen in a row, then Wells, then a relay to third.

Rasmussen retired 15 straight after the early traffic. He struck out 10. He walked two. The MLB recap said he piled up a career-high 23 swinging strikes, the most by a Ray in a postseason game. Cutters, changeups, four-seamers, two-seamers. Jazz Chisholm Jr. told MLB.com Rasmussen hit all his spots.

Austin Wells broke up the no-hitter with a double down the right-field line with two outs in the eighth. Victor Mesa Jr. threw to Taylor Walls. Walls threw to Junior Caminero. Wells was out at third. The no-hit bid ended. The shutout did not. Rasmussen is the seventh pitcher in the Modern Era to carry a no-hitter through 7 2/3 innings in the postseason, the MLB recap said, and the first since Aníbal Sánchez in the 2019 NLCS.

"My heart rate was at a thousand beats per minute," Rasmussen said, per MLB.com. "I was just trying to execute one pitch at a time."

Bryan Baker threw the ninth: no hits, two strikeouts, 14 pitches, the save. New York's only hit stayed in the eighth. The Yankees finished with one hit and two men left on.

Cole for five. Aranda for the only run.

Cole (0-1) threw five innings: five hits, one earned, one walk, five strikeouts, 82 pitches. The earned run was Aranda's homer, his first of this postseason, a fly to right-center in the third. Tampa Bay had five hits. It needed one run. It got it there.

Yandy Díaz singled. Liam Hicks doubled and walked. Mesa singled. Richie Palacios doubled. Caminero walked twice. Nobody else scored. The Trop did not need a second run.

New York's lineup went quiet in a way the box score does not soften. Cody Bellinger went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. Spencer Jones went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. Trent Grisham went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. Ben Rice went 0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts. Chisholm went 0-for-2 with a walk and a stolen base. Luis García Jr. went 0-for-3. Giancarlo Stanton pinch-hit and struck out. Wells had the double. That was the hit column.

Ryan Weathers threw a clean sixth after Cole. Paul Blackburn and Brent Headrick kept it 1-0. They never got a run to protect.

Cash compared him to Halladay. Saturday did not make him take it back.

Kevin Cash told MLB.com before Rasmussen's last regular-season start at Yankee Stadium that the work ethic reminded him of Roy Halladay. Rasmussen carried a no-hitter into the seventh that night and struck out 11 in the start that clinched the AL East. Cash wondered if he had set the bar too high. Saturday he did not walk it back.

"I've said a lot of dumb things in my life," Cash said, per MLB.com. "That one was not."

Aranda, through interpreter Kevin Vera, called Rasmussen the definition of an ace. Walls called him a machine. The Rays have won each of Rasmussen's last 13 starts, the MLB recap said. In 11 career regular-season games against New York he was 5-2 with a 1.81 ERA. Saturday was the postseason version of that.

Tampa Bay has the 1-0 lead in a best-of-five. New York has to solve an arm that just one-hit it. The series continues at Tropicana Field. One swing from Aranda is still the whole Yankees problem until somebody else scores.

AthX Engine after the baseball

AthX Engine (our projection and scoring system) put Tampa Bay at 5 team fantasy points on a 1-0. Rasmussen had 35 pitching FP, first on the four-game board. Aranda had 6 hitting FP. New York sat at -2. Those numbers are the shutout and the eight innings: a win, one run, none against, and a no-hit bid that lasted until two outs in the eighth.

Fantasy points measure the night under platform scoring rules. Share prices also move with traders through dynamic pricing. They are related. They are not the same number.

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*Sources: MLB.com schedule; MLB Gameday wrap; ESPN scoreboard; ESPN box score; AthX Engine scoring applied to verified box stats. Information only; not financial advice.*