After Toronto scored twice in the ninth off Dellin Betances to climb within 7-6, and the bases were loaded when Blake Parker replaced the NY closer with two outs. Before Tuesday’s game, the Yankees were leaning toward using the 25-year-old right-hander, but after the game, their starting pitcher was listed as “TBA”.
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“We’re fine. Extremely confident group of guys that we have”, Stroman said.
“It’d be a lot more exciting if it were 7-4 instead of 7-6”, Gardner replied. Additionally, Boston has 10 more home games, the fewest of any of the AL playoff contenders. Judge, struggling mightily even to put his bat on the baseball lately, already had come through with a big hit.
McCann’s first homer led off the second inning and landed in the luxury suites just below the third deck in right field.
Ellsbury added an RBI single in the third and rookie Travis Austin hit his second double of the game in the fourth, a drive off the wall in left-center that drove in two runs for a 5-1 lead. The unsafe Pillar was at the plate, the even more risky Justin Smoak was waiting right behind him, and the biggest arm in the Yankees’ bullpen was already spent. First pitch is scheduled for 7:05pm and can be seen on YES. The ball was ticketed for the left field corner but bounced into the seats. The Yankees needed a sweep, needed to be able to stick a finger at the wins column as proof they were playing better than they had all year.
Yankees: LHP CC Sabathia (8-12, 4.20) pitches Thursday night in the opener of a four-game series against last-place Tampa Bay.
With most of their remaining schedule against divisional foes, and most of those foes being ahead of them in the playoff hunt, each game has enormous significance for NY. Gardner’s body language seemed to say. Second baseman Starlin Castro then hit a sacrifice fly to deep right to score Gregorius, giving NY the 5-4 lead.
Making the most of a soft spot in the schedule, the Red Sox have gone 5-3 against the Tampa Bay Rays, Oakland Athletics and San Diego Padres to pull into a tie with the Blue Jays atop the AL East standings.
The scoreboard had some disheartening early numbers involving Houston and Baltimore, two of the teams ahead of the Yankees in the wild-card hunt.
Boy, are the Yankees happy Mitchell didn’t have to sit out all season.
Former Patchogue-Medford High School star Marcus Stroman (9-7), up and down all season, was pretty good over five innings, striking out eight and walking one.
But somehow, the shedding of a couple of spare parts (Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller) and some exhausted blood (Carlos Beltran and Alex Rodriguez) and replacing it with the youthful exuberance of Judge, Austin and Gary Sanchez has given this club a jolt of adrenaline.
“I feel like we knew the talent was here”, Warren said.
“We’ve been playing playoff baseball really since about August 1”, Girardi said. We’ve had some young guys come up and really play well. “Our guys are having fun competing on a daily basis, and the hope is that we can keep that up”. “But I think sometimes new blood can just stir things up”. Basically, they’re looking for one – unless they should play a doubleheader.
“He’s around the strike zone, extremely efficient, kept his pitch count down, gave us every opportunity to win”, manager Kevin Cash said. That trio has helped the team to wins in four of its last five, pulling the O’s within one game of the AL East lead in the process. So their destiny is exclusively in their own hands.
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John Gibbons looked mentally and physically beaten sitting inside the visiting manager’s office at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night. “Hopefully we can take advantage of it”.
