It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t the most exciting game of baseball, but Monday’s clash with the Rangers ended in a 4-3 win for the Yankees.
They didn’t turn their 4-0 lead into a blowout victory, and their starting pitcher couldn’t get through five innings, but the Yankees got a win against the team in front of them. The plan for the rest of the season should read lather, rinse, repeat, regardless of how clean each game turns out.
At 84-67, the Bombers pulled within half a game of the Blue Jays for the second wild card after their rivals lost to the Rays on Monday night.
“After getting pretty much blown out for the last two days, it’s nice to start this series off with a win,” manager Aaron Boone said.
Gary Sanchez whipped a low-flying line drive over the left field fence to get things going, and the Yankees added three more runs in the next inning, staking a 4-0 lead after three. What looked to be a straightforward, painless win took a different shape as the game unfolded under a full moon at Yankee Stadium.
The Rangers got three runs in the top of the fifth, but the Yankees’ bullpen held the line. Rather than continuing their troubling trend of losing to deeply inferior teams, the Yankees buried the Rangers and their group of no-names to seal a desperately needed win.
Nestor Cortes Jr.’s streak of nine straight starts of at least five innings was snapped on Monday by the Rangers, who came into the game as the only team in the league with an on-base percentage under .300. His first inning started on an ominous foot, but Cortes made sure the singles that started the game wouldn’t hurt him, striking out Texas 3-4-5 hitters to sidestep any early damage.
The trio of strikeouts began a run of 11 straight batters that Cortes sent back to the bench. He’d finish the night with seven punch outs and three earned runs, all of which came in the fifth inning.
Cortes tried a slider to veteran Charlie Culberson, who brought a .924 OPS against lefties to the park, earning him an obvious start against the Yankees’ quirky lefty. Culberson read the pitch beautifully and clanged it off the left field foul pole for a solo home run. Another low and inside slider to Leody Taveras became a ground rule double. Taveras scored on Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s double one at-bat later, and Kiner-Falefa zipped home on Adolis Garcia’s sacrifice fly.
Just like that, Cortes’ easy night with ample run support became a tight one-run game. Chad Green was the one to relieve him and give up the sac fly. He’d pitch a scoreless sixth before getting replaced by Clay Holmes, who got five outs, the final two coming against the meat of Texas’ thin lineup. Holmes recorded two strikeouts, giving him 17 in his last 12 innings of work.
Joely Rodriguez got the call for what Boone hoped would be the last batter of the eighth, lefty Nathaniel Lowe. With the matchup in their favor, Lowe tapped a soft grounder, exactly what the doctor ordered. It was divinely placed, though, as Rodriguez fielded it right as Lowe’s spikes reached first base.
Because of the three-batter minimum, Rodriguez had to stay in the game to face Nick Solak, whose OPS is over 100 points higher against lefties than it is against righties. Rodriguez dug deep for one of the biggest strikeouts of his Yankee career, vanquishing Solak on a breaking ball that elicited an ugly check swing.
Aroldis Chapman finalized things with a hold-your-breath save. Saves mean wins, though, and the Yankees are not in a position to lose to the Rangers, let alone anybody. The closer fired a warmup pitch to the backstop and brought the count full to Jonah Heim, the first guy he faced. Chapman eventually got him to swing at a slider in the dirt on the seventh pitch of the plate appearance. He’d need seven pitches again to retire Culberson before making quicker work of Taveras for the final out.
“The good thing about our bullpen is that we can throw a bunch of different looks at you,” Green said. “Our goal down there is to get the ball to Chappy, and we were able to do that successfully.”
Monday’s win was yet another of the one-run variety, and the Yankees have two more against these Rangers before their schedule ramps up for a make-or-break AL East gauntlet. Be it by one run or 21, the Yankees will go to sleep after each win knowing they’re still in the fight.
