Coming off a rare and discouraging series loss to the Rangers at Tropicana Field, Rays shortstop Willy Adames said Friday afternoon that Tampa Bay arrived in New York looking to win a series and “play the game that we know how to play.”

It was a fortuitous mix of scheduling and timing, because the Yankees seem to bring out the best in the Rays.

Starter Michael Wacha dominated for six innings, and the Rays found the hits they’d been looking for all week as they cruised to an 8-2 win on Friday night at Yankee Stadium. Since the start of last season, the Rays are now 14-5 against the Yankees, with a 6-1 record in the Bronx.

The Rays jumped out to an early lead, as Brandon Lowe doubled in Austin Meadows and Randy Arozarena in the first inning, and they never looked back while the Yankees struggled to find the strike zone and stumbled in the field. For all the talk leading up to this series about a history of high-and-tight purpose pitches, the Rays’ best method of retaliation was winning.

“I thought the focus needed to be, 'Let's try to find a way to win a ballgame,’” manager Kevin Cash said. “It's been a frustrating couple days at home, so to come in here against a good team -- with their fans that were, you know, animated -- I thought we handled things really, really well. So, [we’re] very encouraged with that.”

Wacha fired six scoreless innings and struck out nine while allowing just one hit and two walks. It was just the third time in his nine-year career, and the first time since 2017, that the right-hander put together a scoreless start of at least six innings with nine or more strikeouts. Wacha never ran into any real trouble, and he pitched with a lead from the moment he took the mound.

Wacha used his entire arsenal to great effect, keeping the Yankees off balance with a four-pitch mix. The Yankees swung and missed on 18 of his 93 pitches, and the distribution of swinging strikes shows just how balanced his pitch mix was: eight four-seam fastballs, five cutters, four changeups and one curveball.

“My pitches had some good movement,” Wacha said. “Everything was just dancing. We were able to get ahead of them and felt like we were in attack mode pretty much the whole game. … It’s fun whenever everything’s working, for sure.”

“Just a tremendous performance,” Cash said.

The Rays entered Friday’s series opener having been tied or behind at the end of 25 consecutive innings, with their last lead coming in the third inning on Tuesday night. That changed immediately, as Lowe slammed an 0-2 fastball from Yankees opener Nick Nelson off the wall in right-center field for a two-run double -- although he thought it was a homer off his bat -- before Wacha worked a perfect inning on 11 pitches.

The Rays had only recorded six hits in their previous 45 at-bats with runners in scoring position before Lowe’s double. And they were hardly perfect in that regard against the Yankees, either, going 3-for-15 in those situations. But they still found ways to pile on runs, sometimes with help from New York’s defense, and Wacha’s dominance made their lead feel even bigger.

“Any time you can get off to a good start against a team like this, it's always going to put a little relief on the hitters and hopefully the pitcher up there on the mound,” Lowe said. “So it was good to get out early and get ahead of them.”

In the fifth, Mike Brosseau ripped a one-out double down the left-field line to score Joey Wendle from first base then Brosseau scored when Yankees third baseman Gio Urshela misplayed Adames’ hard ground ball. The Yankees gifted the Rays two more runs in the inning when second baseman Rougned Odor threw away a double-play ball off the bat of Arozarena. After three softly hit singles to begin the sixth inning, Mike Zunino drove in two more runs on a double that fell just in front of Yankees left fielder Clint Frazier.

The tension between the two clubs that resurfaced last weekend, when the Yankees hit four Rays batters in three games, never really came into play on Friday. Lowe was hit in the left forearm by a cutter from pitcher Michael King, but he simply took his base. When asked about it afterward, Lowe twice said, “It happened. I'm past it. It's done.”

The biggest show of emotion came from some of the 10,202 fans at Yankee Stadium, who flung baseballs and other objects onto the field while the Yankees were hitting in the eighth inning, briefly halting play.

“I definitely didn't want any of our guys to get hit, especially in the outfield,” Lowe said. “We were trying to call them in just to kind of get away -- a lot of the balls were coming from the outfield. Definitely haven't seen anything like that before. That’s a first for my baseball experience.”