Gerrit Cole loses focus after bad call as Yankees fall to Rays, 3-1: ‘That was a strike’

ST. PETERSBURG — An hour later, Gerrit Cole was still sure he was right, but it didn’t really matter. The pitch to Ji-Man Choi was called a ball and Cole lost him. The Yankees ace couldn’t put away the sixth inning and that cost the Yankees in a 3-1 loss to the Rays at Tropicana Field.

The Yankees (33-14) lost for the first time in five games and for the first time to the Rays (27-19) this season. They had already guaranteed at least a split of this four-game series, are still in possession of the best record in baseball and have a 5.5-game lead over the Rays in the American League East.

“No,” Cole said when asked if there was any doubt in his mind he had struck out Choi in the sixth. “I mean, I’ll look at it anyway but yeah that was a strike.”

With two outs, he thought he had Choi on a 89-mph slider, instead home plate umpire Edwin Moscoso called it a ball and Cole walked him. The right-hander was visibly upset on the mound, saying “You missed it. You missed that one,” to Moscoso.

After the game, Cole shrugged it off and said it did not affect him. But he then walked Wander Franco on four straight pitches to put two on.

“We knew that we had two right-handers come up so if the chips didn’t fall early with Franco we were gonna [attack] the right handers,” Cole explained.

Instead, Randy Arozarena’s short fly ball over shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s glove brought in Choi for the tying run.

The Rays got lucky in the seventh when Francisco Mejia’s high pop up off Lucas Luetge managed to drop in between Joey Gallo and Gleyber Torres in right field. Anthony Rizzo saved a run when he charged Harold Ramirez’s groundball and threw out Kevin Kiermaier at home. Mejia, however, scored on Yandy Diaz’s two-out high chopper off Michael King to third base, DJ LeMahieu didn’t have time to make the throw and the Rays took the 2-1 lead.

Franco tripled off King in the eighth and scored on a Manuel Margot single for the insurance run.

It took 26 pitches for Cole to get through the first, but he shifted into gear and cruised until that Choi at-bat.

“We thought he had him,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Actually, I haven’t even gone back and looked at it but we thought he had him right there. Didn’t get the call and then [Cole] makes a good pitch to Arozarena and it just dumps one out there on him, but I thought Gerrit was great today.”

Cole went six innings and allowed a run on two hits. He struck out 10, his third double-digit strikeout game of the season and second in a row, but also walked three. Cole had not walked a batter in his two previous starts and the Yankees’ starters had combined to walk four in their 10 previous starts.

The Yankees ace had pretty much everything working for him through the first five innings. He had 20 swings-and-misses, 10 on his slider and seven on his fastball. He took a no-hitter into the fifth inning.

But he didn’t get much help.

LeMahieu, back in the lineup for the first time since Monday because of a sore left wrist, jumped on former Yankee Corey Kluber for a long double to lead off the game. Aaron Judge singled and Rizzo brought home LeMahieu on a sacrifice fly. Judge got caught trying to tag up on a double play on Torres’ fly ball to right.

That was all Kluber, who was a Yankee last season, would allow.

“Yeah, he pitched well. He settled in there for a while and was throwing the ball really good, not giving us a whole lot to hit,” LeMahieu said. “So I wish we could have got more going against them, you know, forced to throw the ball over the plate a little bit more, but he made good pitches.”

The Yankees had a chance in the eighth with Margot dropping Kiner-Falefa’s two-out fly ball to put the tying run on base. Boone called catcher Jose Trevino back and pinch hit switch hitter Aaron Hicks left-handed against right-hander Jason Adam. Hicks, who was out of the lineup the first two games with right hamstring tightness, struck out.

“Adam is still a tough at-bat for a righty there,” Boone said. “Just trying to move the line as much as I could so yeah, it was a bit of a debate there but I felt like Hicks might catch one or at least control the zone on him. So, yeah, it was a tough call.”