TAMPA — It is once again time to embark on another 72-hour craze over the legitimacy of the Yankees’ bats and how they are changing the sport.

That is what happens when they club a franchise-record nine home runs, in case you had forgotten.

For the second time this season, the first sparking the torpedo bat fad after the second game of the year, the Yankees crushed nine homers — seven in the first four innings alone — to cruise to their fourth straight win, a laugher of a 13-3 beatdown of the Rays at Steinbrenner Field.

After sitting through a one-hour, 55-minute rain delay to begin the game (with a 9:30 p.m. first pitch), Giancarlo Stanton, Cody Bellinger and José Caballero drilled two homers apiece while the Yankees in total accounted for 3,419 feet of long balls.

“That’s why they are the Bronx Bombers,” Caballero said.

With the Red Sox and Mariners both losing, the Yankees (68-57) moved into sole possession of the first AL wild card, now leading both teams by a game, while jumping into second place in the AL East — for the first time since Aug. 1 — trailing the Blue Jays by five games.

In the land of the Grapefruit League, the Yankees teed off on Rays pitchers like they were minor leaguers brought on the bus ride across the state.

Except they were right-hander Shane Baz, left-hander Ian Seymour and left-hander Mason Montgomery, who combined to serve up the nine homers to Stanton (two), Bellinger (two), Caballero (two), Aaron Judge, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Ben Rice.

In the process, the Yankees became the first team in MLB history to record multiple nine-homer games in a single season.

“We hit nine? Wow,” manager Aaron Boone said. “To do it twice, that’s remarkable. And there were some ones that were seriously hit, too. Just a really impressive offensive showing against a team that obviously is not always easy to score runs against.”

The Yankees have now twice fallen one homer short of tying the MLB single-game record.

“We got to pick it up,” Bellinger quipped.

For the third time this season — all of them in the opening frame — the Yankees drilled back-to-back-to-back home runs in the first inning off the bats of Judge, Bellinger and Stanton.

The Yankees joined the 2024 Dodgers and 1982 Brewers as the only teams to hit back-to-back-to-back homers at least three times in one season, according to Stathead’s Katie Sharp.

The other two times the Yankees have done it this season came on March 29 against the Brewers (when it was back-to-back-to-back-to-back) and April 29 against the Orioles. Judge was involved in all three while Bellinger took part in two.

“We have a really good offense,” said Bellinger, who also had a four-hit night. “Ebbs and flows of the 162-game season, it’s not always going to be pretty. But we all believe in each other and you know the talent’s there. We’re doing a good job of putting it all together. It’s been fun to be a part of.”

Judge’s 429-foot blast on Tuesday was his 40th home run of the season, marking the fourth different season in which he has hit that milestone.

He became just the fourth player in Yankees history to do so, joining Babe Ruth (11), Lou Gehrig (five) and Mickey Mantle (four) — with Judge being the only one in that group to accomplish the feat in his first 10 seasons.

Stanton was playing right field for the first time since last Wednesday — after sitting out the weekend series against the Cardinals with lower-body soreness from playing the field three straight games — so the Yankees could get his bat in the lineup.

That proved prescient as Stanton remained red-hot, having now clobbered 13 home runs in his last 29 games.

After the first-inning barrage, Caballero added his first home run as a Yankee in the second inning to go up 5-0 against his former team before Chisholm’s solo shot made it 6-2 in the third.

Stanton’s second blast was a three-run shot in the fourth inning and Rice went back-to-back with him to push the lead to 10-2.

Bellinger then went yard again for a two-run shot in the sixth before Caballero finished it off in the ninth with a solo shot.

All of it was more than enough run support for Carlos Rodón, who grinded through the humidity to deliver six innings of two-run ball.

That was not always a given on a night when he had already started to warm up before the rain delay — he was just about to get on the bullpen mound when the tarp was rolled out — but he remained locked in to provide some length.

“It’s part of it,” Rodón said. “We got to get this game in. It’s just part of the way we do things. Roll with the punches. … Once again, [the offense] made it easy.”