Yankees belt franchise record-tying nine homers in destruction of Rays

TAMPA — It is once again time to embark on another 72-hour craze over the legitimacy of the Yankees’ bats and how they are changing the sport.

That is what happens when they club nine home runs, in case you had forgotten.

For the second time this season, the first sparking the torpedo bat fad after the second game of the year, the Yankees crushed nine homers — seven in the first four innings alone — to tie the franchise record in a laugher of a 13-3 beatdown of the Rays at Steinbrenner Field.

Giancarlo Stanton, Cody Bellinger and José Caballero drilled two homers apiece while the Yankees in total accounted for 3,419 feet of long balls.

With the Red Sox and Mariners both losing, the Yankees (68-57) moved into sole possession of the first AL wild card, now leading both teams by a game, while jumping into second place in the AL East — for the first time since Aug. 1 — trailing the Blue Jays by five games.

In the land of the Grapefruit League, the Yankees teed off on Rays pitchers like they were minor leaguers brought on the bus ride across the state.

Except they were right-hander Shane Baz, left-hander Ian Seymour and left-hander Mason Montgomery, who combined to serve up the nine homers to Stanton (two), Bellinger (two), Caballero (two), Aaron Judge, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Ben Rice.

After sitting through a one-hour, 55-minute rain delay to begin the game (with a 9:30 p.m. first pitch), the Yankees clubbed back-to-back-to-back home runs in the first inning — the third time this season they have done so, all of them in the opening frame — off the bats of Judge, Bellinger and Stanton.

The Yankees joined the 2024 Dodgers and 1982 Brewers as the only teams to hit back-to-back-to-back homers at least three times in one season, according to Stathead’s Katie Sharp.

The other two times the Yankees have done it this season came on March 29 against the Brewers (when it was back-to-back-to-back-to-back) and April 29 against the Orioles.

Judge was involved in all three while Bellinger took part in two.

Judge’s 429-foot blast on Tuesday was his 40th home run of the season, marking the fourth different season in which he has hit that milestone.

He became just the fourth player in Yankees history to do so, joining Babe Ruth (11), Lou Gehrig (five) and Mickey Mantle (four) — with Judge being the only one in that group to accomplish the feat in his first 10 seasons.

Stanton was playing right field for the first time since last Wednesday — after sitting out the weekend series against the Cardinals with lower-body soreness from playing the field three straight games — so the Yankees could get his bat in the lineup.

That proved prescient as Stanton remained red-hot, having now clobbered 13 home runs in his last 29 games.

Bellinger led the club with a four-hit night, two of which were his 23rd and 24th home runs of the year. The second made it a 12-2 lead in the sixth inning.

After the first-inning barrage, Caballero added his first home run as a Yankee in the second inning.

Shortly after receiving a video tribute from his old team, Caballero poked a two-run shot down the right-field line to make it 5-0.

He later finished it off with a solo shot in the ninth inning.

Stanton’s second blast was a three-run shot in the fourth inning, briefly extending the lead to 9-2 before Rice went back-to-back with him and made it 10-2.

Rice, making another start at catcher for the scuffling Austin Wells, now has 19 home runs on the year.

All of it was more than enough run support for Carlos Rodón, who grinded through the humidity to deliver six innings of two-run ball.