Change of heart
Youth revolution gives Yanks new lease on life
SO the trade deadline came, ownership and management pulled off their version of a purge, and Alex Rodriguez went soon after. But instead of a halt, the Yankees have caught fire. Lo and behold, they are even in a playoff race.
“We understood the situation at the deadline,” Mark Teixeira told The Post before his first-inning, two-run homer served as a preamble for the Yankees’ 14-4 mauling of the Orioles in the first of three in The Bronx this weekend. “The franchise was going through a transition, but I don’t think there was ever a sense that management had pulled the plug on the team or on the season.
“We still had the obligation to go out and play and try to win every game and we all took that seriously. It was said and unsaid,” said the pending Old-Timers’ Day invitee, who on Aug. 5 announced his retirement effective at the end of the season. “The way I looked at it was what was to say that the young guys wouldn’t come in, do a great job and give us a shot in the race.”
So add prescience to the qualities that have come to define Teixeira. For this was yet another game in which the Baby Bombers stamped their imprint upon the outcome, another game in which Roy Hobbs — Gary Sanchez by another name — went deep into the night, another start in which Luis Cessa impressed for a team that has gone 14-9 since the deadline.
“We’re still not in the place we want to be, but we still have a chance in this thing,” Brett Gardner said. “And we believe in ourselves.”
The road to the playoffs is littered with potholes. It is indisputable the Yankees are only 3 ½ games behind the Orioles for the second wild-card spot with 35 games to play — and with eight more to go against Baltimore — but getting from here to there is about as simple a task as getting from Fordham Road to the Stadium on the Deegan at rush hour.
There are multiple teams between the Yankees and Orioles just as there are three teams — the O’s, Blue Jays and Red Sox — and 5 ¹/2 games between New York and first place in the East. Of course, 22 of the remaining 35 games on the schedule are against those Orioles, Blue Jays (7) and Red Sox (7).
When the Yankees traded Carlos Beltran, their most productive hitter by a mile, they had been averaging just a tick over four runs per game. They have averaged over a run a game more (5.2) since he was sent to Texas in the wake of Friday’s 18-hit outburst.
When the Yankees traded Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller, two-thirds of their nonpareil back of the bullpen, they were 35-3 with the lead after six innings. They are 13-1 in similar situations utilizing a less famous bridge to Dellin Betances.
They have changed the conversation in The Bronx. It is no longer about failure, but about hope. If ownership feared the team would play meaningless games before empty stands and soporific fans upon a deadline sale, they needn’t have. The joint was jumping Friday.
“I’ve only been here a short time, so I can’t compare to the time before,” Sanchez, who became the third player in big league history to amass 10 home runs in his first 22 games, said through an interpreter. “But we have a lot of energy, and we want to keep winning.”
It isn’t and wasn’t just Sanchez. Cessa was fine in winning his second straight start. Ben Heller, who came from Cleveland as part of the package for Miller, pitched a scoreless inning in his major league debut. Aaron Judge smacked a double and threw out a runner at second.
They’re the Baby Bombers and they’re in a race. Next thing you know, Girardi will be telling Sanchez to knock the cover off the ball.
And he will.