NEW YORK — The Tampa Bay Rays swept the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series Wednesday night, holding a lineup that had just scored 18 runs in a Wild Card Series sweep of the Red Sox to a total of five runs across three games, advancing to the AL Championship Series on the strength of a five-man pitching rotation deployed with surgical precision.

The Rays recorded 81 outs in the series. Five starters who ended the regular season in the rotation accounted for 68 of them, while closer Bryan Baker recorded nine outs — earning saves in all three games — and lefty Cam Booser picked up three outs. Kevin Kelly contributed a critical out by striking out Giancarlo Stanton in Game 3.

“Our starters this year, those five guys, the way they’ve been throwing down the stretch, they’re as critical to our success as possible,” president of baseball operations Erik Neander said during the clubhouse celebration at Yankee Stadium. “You only need three starters. But somehow, some way, we talked about, ‘How do we get all these guys involved?’ Because you’re going to need them, and it couldn’t have worked out better.”

Drew Rasmussen started the series with eight innings in a 1-0 win at Tropicana Field. Freddy Peralta and Ian Seymour combined to cover 7 2/3 innings in a 5-2 Game 2 victory. Then Nick Martinez, Seymour and Griffin Jax teamed up for seven combined innings in the 4-3 series-clinching win Wednesday at Yankee Stadium — with Seymour pitching in consecutive games on one day of rest.

“We’re all about just getting outs as a pitching staff, man,” said Martinez, who allowed two runs in 3 2/3 innings in Game 3 after taking a comebacker off his back. “We know how important every out is in the playoffs, and we don’t care what capacity we do it in. We just want to get outs.”

Game 3 turned on a pivotal sixth inning in which Jax issued a walk, had a second walk overturned to a strikeout via a well-timed challenge, and watched what appeared to be a game-tying homer by Anthony Volpe get reversed on replay due to spectator interference. Jax then struck out Spencer Jones to end the inning and retired Jazz Chisholm Jr., Trent Grisham and Ben Rice in the seventh. “Really impressed with Griffin Jax after what took place,” manager Kevin Cash said. “The frustration that probably was coming through his mind that he thought it was a homer, to be able to bear down right there and get Spencer Jones for the strikeout and then go back out and have a really dominant inning was huge.”

“That’s the series right there,” Cash said of the pitching performance overall. “We were able to stay in rhythm, stay in sync. … And the way our pitchers just executed multiple times through that lineup was really, really impressive.”

“We’ve been doing that for about seven months now, just finding different ways,” Baker said. “I think we won a game in about every different way you can this year, so to go ahead and clinch on a win like that, it was pretty special.”

The AL Championship Series opens Monday at Tropicana Field, where Rasmussen is expected to start Game 1 with additional rest from the quick sweep.