STANDIN’ TALL IN EAST
Stanton, Judge provide ‘O’ as Yankees tie Red Sox for first
On the night of April 20 the Yankees fell to 9-9, which added up to 7½ games out of first place, and, be honest, fans, with the Red Sox at 17-2 at the time you would have settled for getting to within striking distance by, say, Memorial Day. Yet here they were, pulling dead even with the Sox into first place on May 8, and suffice it to say you could have gotten better odds on Joe Kelly getting cheered here in his first appearance in the Bronx since igniting the brawl in Boston last month by drilling Tyler Austin in the back.
Such was the unlikely nature of this crazy-hot roll the Yankees are on, which has now stretched to 16 wins in 17 games with Tuesday night’s 3-2 thriller over the Red Sox at the Stadium.
And when you factor in that they’ve played their last 11 games against the Angels, Astros, Indians, and now the Sox, it sounds practically impossible.
Yet the Yankees aren’t taking any bows, they made that clear after the win.
“It’s blinders on,” was the way Aaron Boone put it. “Go out and win the next game.”
As it should be. If anything, the hard-fought win over the Red Sox, in a game that was tied 2-2 in the eighth inning, was a reminder the work is really just starting Boone’s ballclub.
For while there was no hint of a carryover from the Boston brawl, other than Kelly getting soundly booed when he relieved in the eighth inning, there was more evidence this could be a division race for the ages between the two teams that currently have the best records in the majors.
The Stadium was rocking all night, as Giancarlo Stanton had a breakthrough night with the fans by hitting two solo home runs, and by the seventh there was a playoff-like tension as Aaron Judge set off pandemonium with his tie-breaking single off, yep, Public Enemy No. 1 on the mound.
At some point about then, Boone noticed how loud and frenzied the Stadium had become, and he leaned over so his coaches could hear him and said: “I forgot how much fun these games were,” he said. Boone would know, of course, having secured his place in Yankee lore with that ALCS-clinching home run off Tim Wakefield in 2003, when this rivalry was exploding with intensity the players and managers couldn’t even quite describe or believe.
We may not be headed for quite that level again, unless villains on the level of Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling and Alex Rodriguez emerge.
Kelly and Austin, the principals in the brawl at Fenway, don’t exactly qualify, but certainly there is potential for more bad blood and, at the very least, plenty more of this high-intensity baseball, for these teams are surely destined to deliver a memorable race.
If the Yankees are going to prevail, there will have to be more nights like this, when their Twin Titans prove to be the difference — Stanton with his home runs, Judge with his clutch single.
After all, the Yankees lead the majors in runs scored, and they’re tied for second in home runs, and nights like this are exactly why they traded for Stanton, when he shows off his talent by hitting home runs down
each line, tomahawking a breaking ball to left, slashing an up-and-away fastball to right.
And yet the truth is the Yankees continue to lay waste to the best teams in the American League mostly because their starting pitching is proving to be dominant in a way nobody expected this season.
Luis Severino is the exception, coming off his No. 3 finish in the AL Cy Young Award voting last season, and he is living up to his ace status, pitching to a 2.21 ERA after going six-plus innings on Tuesday night, racking up 11 strikeouts.
On this night Severino wasn’t as dominant as his previous start, when he went the distance in shutting out the mighty Astros, but if not for some shaky defense, including Gary Sanchez’s failure to block a third strike on a ball in the dirt, he might well have thrown seven scoreless innings.
Yet he continued this run of great pitching from Yankee starters, as they’ve put up a 1.87 ERA over these last 17 games.
Meanwhile, David Price was scratched from his scheduled Wednesday start due to numbness in his pitching hand, the same problem that forced him out of his start in Boston last month against the Yankees.
Of course, that’s probably anything but a break for the Yankees, the way they’ve owned Price over the years, but it could still be significant blow to the Red Sox.
Somehow, you just know most of these Rivalry games this season are going to come down to moments like this one did, with the crowd howling angrily at Kelly and Judge lining a basesloaded single that proved to be the difference.
“It was a fun atmosphere,” Judge said. “It’s fun to win one like that.”
Chances are the Yankees barely remember what it’s like to lose these days. Little more than two weeks after the Red Sox threatened to run away and hide, they moved into a first place tie. Nobody would have believed they could do it by May 8th.