As September begins, Yanks keep hope alive
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — They completed their work for the day just before the clock struck midnight, just before the calendar flipped to September. They closed the door on this 5-4 victory over the Royals, maybe shuttered for good the Kansas City season, too.
Still standing. Still breathing. Still owning a puncher’s chance.
This time, it took 13 innings, and this time they had to overcome an early 4-0 hole, and when you bookend this with the 5-4 win they collected Tuesday night in 10 innings, it makes for a hell of a business trip through the Midwest. The Yankees keep running into teams higher than them in the wildcard standings, keep taking two out of three from them, keep grinding, keep jabbing, keep gaining. Next up: Baltimore. And you can’t know what awaits beyond. But it’s going to be interesting. It’s going to be September baseball, with all the wonder and agony attached to that. September the first and the Yankees are 2 ½ games back of the pack.
“It shows you there’s a toughness in there,” manager Joe Girardi said. “These guys really want it. I’m proud of these guys.”
Let the mathematicians tell you the odds are too steep. Let the thick pile of teams surrounding the Yankees in the standings warn you the logistics are too stern, the pathway too crowded. Let all of them tell you why you shouldn’t believe.
Then look at what the Yankees have done the past week: At Seattle (ahead of them in the wild-card pack): two out of three. Baltimore (ahead of them in the wild-card pack): two out of three. At Kansas City (ahead of them in the wildcard pack): two out of three.
You keep doing that, you keep winning two out of three, you maybe do that again at Camden Yards this weekend, and one of these days you’re going to wake up and the mathematicians will be scratching their heads. The calendar turns, the Yankees fly to Maryland, there are 30 games left.
Win 20 — win two out of every three — and they’ll be at 89.
Eighty-seven got them in last year. So you had better believe 89 gives them that puncher’s chance, and maybe a little bit more.
Which is all the Yankees want, which is all they need, which is all they seek from a baseball calendar that now has been reduced to its purest form: the game ahead of you, the series ahead of you. Win the game. Win the series. Take your chances. And move along.
Games like this one are what allow you to truly believe, too. Ian Kennedy suffocated them for five innings, made them look helpless, made them look like hapless. And then: three in the sixth, capped by a huge homer off the bat of Starlin Castro. One in the seventh.
And then, as a parade of Yankees relievers kept the Royals off the board inning after inning, they found themselves with the sacks full in the 13th, and Brian McCann at the plate. McCann: the erstwhile foundation at catcher now reduced to backup and full-time DH, all but exiled to Atlanta or somewhere else already, delivering a fly ball to left field, and that was enough.
Three outs from Dellin Betances later, the Yankees found themselves 2 ½ games south of the playoffs. It still will be a gantlet to cross, trying to get enough wins, win enough series, still plenty of games against the AL East, which hasn’t been kind to them this year.
Doesn’t matter. This was two out of three, four out of six, six out of nine, and the calendar flips and September beckons and the Yankees are precisely where they want to be, exactly where they need to be. In it. In the thick of it. Right there. Puncher’s chance.
They could have surrendered the season in Seattle last week, didn’t. They could have bent to Baltimore’s will last weekend, didn’t. They certainly could have caved in Kansas City. Didn’t.
Maybe September has surprises in store for them, and maybe the mathematicians really do know better than the rest of us. But it sure will be fun watching the Yankees try to make them slip on their slide rules and crack their calculators. Thirty games to go. The fun starts now.