Austin Wells had an all-time brain cramp on Wednesday night.
The New York Yankees catcher Wells completely embarrassed himself during the latter stages of his team’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays. In the bottom of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium in New York, N.Y., the Yankees were trailing 3-2. However, Anthony Volpe tied the game with a one-out solo homer off Pete Fairbanks, and Wells followed with a base hit to center field.
Yankees outfielder Trent Grisham then decided to bunt Wells into scoring position with the heart of the order due up next. That was all fine and dandy, especially after Grisham laid one down perfectly towards the third base side.
But there was just one problem — Wells forgot how many outs there were. Somehow thinking that Grisham had just made the third out of the inning, Wells touched second base and then … did a 180 and casually walked off the bag towards the dugout. Rays first baseman Jonathan Aranda quickly noticed that something was amiss and fired the ball into second base, eventually tagging out Wells in a rundown.
Take a look at the unbelievable video.
Austin Wells gets doubled up because he thought there were three outs pic.twitter.com/Hisfe05Mil
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) July 31, 2025
Here is just the wider angle of the play that showed Wells walking off the bag after Grisham was thrown out.
Austin Wells horrible baserunning pic.twitter.com/PMhq8o1AKK
— Bobby (@welcomeMLB) July 31, 2025
It is hard to figure out exactly what was going through Wells’ mind there. He had to have known that Grisham was executing a sacrifice, which is only done with one out or less. Yet still, Wells’ situational awareness was on absolute zero there, and he made the final out of the inning to send the game into extras.
Fortunately for Wells though, he was ultimately let off the hook. Ryan McMahon won it for the Yankees in the bottom of the 11th inning with a walkoff hit to score the ghost runner from third base.
Ryan McMahon wins a WILD game for the @Yankees! #walkoff pic.twitter.com/UG1aodGfYd
— MLB (@MLB) July 31, 2025
But that didn’t make the gaffe by the three-year MLB veteran Wells any more defensible. We saw another similarly embarrassing mistake on the basepaths by Jarren Duran of the Boston Red Sox last weekend. But Wells definitely outdid Duran there by doing so in a tied game in the bottom of the ninth inning while representing the winning run.
