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Austin Wells Brutal Baserunning Mistake Leaves Yankees Fans Livid

You have to know how many outs there are, especially in the ninth inning.

Tyler Lauletta

Austin Wells got lost while running the bases against the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night.
Austin Wells got lost while running the bases against the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night. / @TalkinYanks / X
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Where the Yankees go, calamity seems to follow.

While New York is still battling to get back atop the AL East standings, they have displayed some mental mistakes over recent games that have fans shaking their heads in dismay. Manager Aaron Boone has been doing what he can to keep things together, especially regarding Anthony Volpe’s recent spat of fielding errors, but after Austin Wells’s miscue on Wednesday night, it’s going to be a tough post-game press conference.

Wells was on first base with one out in the bottom of the ninth and the Yankees tied up with the Rays, 3–3. The Yanks’ tying run had come courtesy of a Volpe homer earlier in the inning, and the team was on the verge of walking the night off in feel-good fashion and hopefully turning the page to brighter days.

At the plate, Trent Grisham laid down a bunt as well as you can do it, advancing Wells to second base with two outs, and putting the Yankees just one hit away from taking the win.

But Wells didn’t stay on second. Instead, he wandered off the base, appearing to believe that Grisham’s out at first had ended the inning. He was caught in a run-down, clearly confused, and the inning was mercifully over.

Wells’s mistake is just an indictment of the Yankees’ fundamentals. You simply always have to know how many outs there are in the inning. Further, if your team had two outs and a man on first base, THEY WOULD NOT BE BUNTING TO GET YOU OVER TO SECOND BASE!!!

Fans online expressed their disbelief at Wells’s lack of awareness.

Luckily for the Yankees, this time they escaped, pulling out the win with a walk-off in the 11th inning.

But while leaving with the W makes for a good night, it’s clear New York has to figure something out and get these small mistakes out of their system if they want to make a run in the postseason.

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Tyler Lauletta
TYLER LAULETTA

Tyler Lauletta is a staff writer for the Breaking and Trending News Team/team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI, he covered sports for nearly a decade at Business Insider, and helped design and launch the OffBall newsletter. He is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, and remains an Eagles and Phillies sicko. When not watching or blogging about sports, Tyler can be found scratching his dog behind the ears.

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