Yankees warm up for Rays by completing sweep of woeful A's

The Oakland Athletics are a very bad baseball team.

And the Yankees did what a contending team, or one that hopes to be a contending team, should do when the calendar intersects with such an opportunity: They took care of business.

The Yankees completed a three-game sweep of an Oakland team that may well make a spirited run at 120 losses this season with an 11-3 victory in front of 40,687 at the Stadium on Wednesday afternoon.

Next on the schedule?

A decidedly different challenge. The Rays, flying high with the game's best record (29-8) entering Wednesday night’s game in Baltimore and coming off taking two of three from the Yankees last weekend in St. Petersburg, start a four-game series at the Stadium Thursday night.

“Those competitive juices really get going when you’re playing another good team,” said Aaron Judge, who missed the first Rays’ series as he was on the injured list with a right hip strain. “They’ve got great pitchers, they’ve got a great lineup that’s not only putting the ball in play but doing some damage and hitting a lot of home runs. Over the years, it’s been fun going toe-to-toe with those guys. We’ve seen them in the postseason, battles here at home, battles at the Trop. We’re looking forward to another great series against them.”

Judge, who had three of the Yankees’ 10 hits Wednesday – the outburst included a three-run homer from Harrison Bader, a two-run shot from DJ LeMahieu and Anthony Volpe’s first career grand slam – watched the previous series against Tampa Bay from the visitor’s dugout at Tropicana Field. All three games were one-run contests, with Sunday’s perhaps the most frustrating as Gerrit Cole coughed up an early 6-0 lead.

“We could have easily been swept that series, we easily could have swept them,” Judge said. “It was just kind of a back-and-forth series where both teams were really grinding at-bats, guys were getting dirty, guys were making plays, pitchers stepped up when they needed to. It was a fun series. It’s a series you want to play in.”

But first was a series against the A’s (8-30), who would be facing relegation if Major League Baseball operated like soccer.

Wednesday afternoon brought the expected thrashing with the Yankees (21-17) taking control with a four-run first, which included Bader’s three-run blast. Bader went 1-for-3 and improved to 12-for-28 with three homers, two triples, seven runs and 11 RBIs in his first eight games after missing the first five weeks with an oblique strain. LeMahieu’s homer and Volpe’s grand slam highlighted a seven-run fifth that made it 11-2. Each of the Yankees’ starters reached base at least once.

“A lot of things in this game are not necessarily about what happens but it’s how you respond to them,” Bader said. “And I think our response these last few games put us in a really confident position moving forward to go out and execute our plans on all sides of the ball and keep playing winning baseball.”  

Jhony Brito, 2-3 with a 6.08 ERA coming in, was OK, allowing two runs and five hits over 4 1/3 innings.

Overmatched and overwhelmed Oakland starter Kyle Muller (1-3, 7.34) allowed six runs, five hits and three walks over four-plus innings.

It was a fine tune-up for an offense that spent much of the last three weeks in the wilderness but has produced at least seven runs in four straight games, a streak that began with last Sunday’s 8-7 loss to the Rays.

“Hopefully we can do better in the win column this time around,” Aaron Boone said. “I think you should always like facing the best, the best teams. I think you always enjoy that and relish in that. In the end, we want to shake hands. That’s what we work hard to do each and every day, but there is something about competing against other really good teams that hopefully brings out the best and hopefully as a competitor you really enjoy it.”