BEAUTY SLEEP
BOMBERS GO FROM LATE-NIGHT LOSS TO BASHING BIRDS
ABUNKER mentality can serve as an asset when you’re under siege. And when you treat your workplace like a bunker, literally.
So it went for these Yankees, who responded to their worst and longest loss of the season by, in many cases, never leaving Yankee Stadium. Refreshed and reloaded Saturday afternoon, they knocked around the Orioles, 8-3, to restore some stability to what has proven a most unstable kickoff to this campaign of sky-high expectations.
Nevertheless, at a modest 5-4 and with two important players hitting the disabled list on Saturday, they still reside in the thick of this early challenge for new manager Aaron Boone and company.
“Over the course of a 162game season, every team is going to go through their share of times when it’s tough, or the injury bug, or whatever,” Boone said. “You’ve got to be able to weather the storm in those times. [I’m] really proud of the guys today, for all that went on [Friday] night, to come out there and grind the way they did. It says a lot about those guys.”
The Yankees’ 14-inning, 7-3 loss to the Orioles ended at 12:29 Saturday morning, and with four players leaving the game early due to injury.
“I actually stayed here last night,” Boone said. “We had so much going on here last night.”
That’s an understatement. Brandon Drury (severe migraines) and CC Sabathia (right hip strain) went on the 10-day disabled list, and losing pitcher Jonathan Holder went to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The other two premature departures, Gary Sanchez (right leg cramp) and Tyler Wade (flu-like symptoms), hope to avoid the DL, though neither played
on Saturday. Up from Scranton came Luis Cessa and Domingo German and utility man Jace Peterson.
“Our depth has been tested a little bit,” Brett Gardner said. “But we do have good depth.”
Gardner, the oldest player on the field Saturday, set the tone with a single, double and two walks, driving home two, after playing all 14 frames on Friday. Peterson, starting in left field, made a pair of nice defensive plays and contributed a single and a walk. Tyler Austin delivered a two-run single in the seventh, and rookie Miguel Andujar, who will be the everyday third baseman in Drury’s absence, tallied his first hit of the season, a second-inning single, after starting the year 0-for-12, and he added the game-winning sacrifice fly in the sixth. Sonny Gray started and threw a solid six innings, allowing three runs.
David Robertson, another graybeard on this youth-infused team, struck out the dangerous Baltimore duo of Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop to escape a second-and-third, one-out jam in the seventh.
“We needed to come back and get a win,” Robertson said. “It felt like we never left.”
A handful of players joined Boone and team officials in sleeping at the ballpark to combat the quick turnaround. “In a lot of ways, these two ran together a little bit,” Boone said.
The entire young season arguably has run together some thanks to the flurry of injuries that began one day before the Yankees broke camp, when Greg Bird reported a right ankle injury which will keep him out until May at the earliest. Aaron Hicks, Billy McKinney and Ben Heller followed Bird, with Jacoby Ellsbury reporting a setback, and then came Friday with Sabathia and Drury.
The odds favored Sabathia hitting the DL at some juncture, and the Yankees will hope the big lefty heals this malady quickly, although he still felt the ailment Saturday morning. The Drury development, however, sets off all sorts of alarms. Drury told the Yankees that he has been dealing with migraines and blurred vision for about six years, as per Brian Cashman, and only two brief notations (one from 2016, the other from last week) exist on his medical records. Otherwise, the young man hid his problems, and everyone involved just hopes for the best.
These 2018 Yankees’ problems are out in the open, the adversity apparent. A bunker mentality, relying upon each other, just might be the way to go.