Yankees’ Austin Wells gets brutally honest about embarrassing gaffe

Wednesday night was an eventful one for the New York Yankees. They found themselves on the brink of defeat many times but managed to rescue themselves over and over again, taking a 5-4 win over the Tampa Bay Rays in 11 innings. The Yankees shot themselves on the foot so many times that it’s a borderline miracle that they managed to come out on top.

One blunder in particular was quite the head-scratcher. In the ninth inning, Austin Wells represented the winning run when he reached base on a single with one out left in the inning. It looked like the Yankees were going to steal one without needing extras, with Wells following up Volpe’s heroics with some of his own.

However, Wells went from hero to zero in a hurry. After Trent Grisham laid down a perfectly good bunt, advancing Wells to second base, the Yankees catcher seemed to forget how many outs there were in the inning. As a result, he wandered off the base and the Rays eventually caught him in a rundown, sending the game to extras.

That was a blunder that could have cost the Yankees the game. But thankfully for Wells, it didn’t, especially considering how honest he was with himself following the game.

“I was just being an idiot,” Wells said, per Gary Phillips of New York Daily News.

There is nothing else Wells could say that would perfectly encapsulate what happened. He simply lost concentration and nearly cost the Yankees the game.

Even Yankees manager Aaron Boone was flummoxed as to what was going on in Wells’ mind during that boneheaded play.

“[That] can’t happen,” Boone said.

Nonetheless, all’s well that ends well, and Wells will be thanking his lucky stars that his Yankees teammates got the job done in extras.

Yankees avert disaster with late-game heroics