ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. _ There may be catches made equal to Aaron Judge's the rest of this baseball season.
It is hard to imagine one surpassing it.
The 6-foot-7, 282-pound right fielder, in an all-out sprint, made a diving catch in the gap to rob Evan Longoria of a game-tying extra-base hit, preserving a one-run lead in the sixth inning.
It led directly to a tense 3-2 Yankees victory over the Rays in front of a charged-up crowd of 20,873 at Tropicana Field.
The Yankees (25-16), who had lost three straight, finished the six-game trip that started Monday in Kansas City 3-3.
CC Sabathia allowed two runs (one earned) and four hits over five innings, the last of those a 33-pitch frame that ballooned his pitch count to 91.
After Corey Dickerson, who homered twice Saturday, led off the sixth with a single and Evan Longoria striding to the plate, Joe Girardi replaced Sabathia with Chad Green.
Longoria, who has owned Sabathia _ and the Yankees _ throughout his career, drove a 1-and-2 fastball into the gap in right-center, a certain RBI double or even triple.
Suddenly, Judge appeared, leaving his feet, body horizontal. He somehow made a backhanded catch as he came to the ground with a thud, starting a 9-6-4 double play. The Yankees dugout erupted as it would on one of his 450-foot-plus home runs. The crowd, about equally split between Yankees and Rays fans, joined together in an appreciative roar upon seeing the replay.
After Rickie Weeks Jr. flied to left to end the inning, Yankees poured from the dugout applauding as Judge trotted in from right, Sabathia at the front of the receiving line.
"None of us," one talent evaluator said of the scouts' section at Tropicana Field, "thought he had any chance at it off the bat."
Green pitched 1 2/3 scoreless innings and Tyler Clippard struck out two in an inning.
Dellin Betances struck out Dickerson to end the eighth, then struck out the side in the ninth to record his second save.
Green started the seventh and walked Steven Souza Jr. on four pitches. Kevin Kiermaier replaced him at first on a fielder's choice and stole second. Kiermaier went to third on a Norris ground out to short and up stepped the dangerous Logan Morrison as a pinch hitter. Girardi brought in right-hander Tyler Clippard, who battled Morrison for 11 pitches, finally retiring him on a soft fly to left.
Rays starter Chris Archer allowed three runs and six hits over 6 1/3 innings. He struck out eight over the first three innings en route to 12 strikeouts. But the Yankees roughed him up in a three-run third, the big blow Brett Gardner's two-run homer, on a first-pitch slider, that snapped a 1-1 tie. It was Gardner's eighth homer of the season, all of them hit in the last 20 games. Didi Gregorius, who had four hits, had an RBI single earlier in the inning that tied it at 1.
