SWEEP THE LEG!
Yanks finish four-game beatdown, leaving Bosox 14 1/2 games out
Gio Urshela and Aaron Judge celebrate Urshela’s two-run homer in the Yankees’ six-run third inning during their 7-4 win over the Red Sox on Sunday night. Judge homered in the first as the Bombers held on for their fifth straight win since making no deals at the trade deadline.
The Yankees are on pace to have more than enough wins to get to the postseason.
Whether they have enough healthy players to do anything when they get there remains to be seen.
During yet another victory over the reeling Red Sox, the Yankees saw Gio Urshela drill foul balls off both his legs in the sixth, forcing him to leave the game two innings later and then Gleyber Torres exited with a core-muscle issue in the eighth.
Still, they hung on for a fifth straight win and finished off a sweep of their rivals with a 7-4 victory in front of another sellout in The Bronx.
It got the Yankees to a season-high 33 games over .500 (72-39), but they also had Aaron Hicks go on the injured list with a right flexor strain, joining what amounts to more than half a roster on the IL.
“This whole team is tough,’’ Aaron Judge said. “We know what we’ve been through, so I think that’s what motivates us. We know how hard everyone is working and how beat up everybody is. We’ve got to stay in there and keep fighting.’’
That’s what they did Sunday, as they stayed eight games ahead of second-place Tampa Bay.
A day after the Yankees scored seven two-out runs against Chris Sale in the fourth inning, they pounded David Price for six runs in the third — again, all with two out.
Neither high-priced lefty finished the fourth inning, as the Yankees recorded their fifth consecutive victory and the Red Sox dropped their eighth in a row, matching their longest losing streak since 2015.
Judge got to Price quickly, hitting his first homer since July 20 in the bottom of the first. But it was the third inning when the Yankees did most of their damage.
Urshela — hitting cleanup — started the onslaught with a two-out, two-run homer to give the Yankees a 3-0 lead.
In all, seven straight batters reached before Price departed, with key hits coming from Cameron Maybin, Mike Ford — just called up from Triple-A Scranton/WilkesBarre to take Hicks’ spot — and Kyle Higashioka, here only because Gary Sanchez is also on the crowded IL.
A two-run single by Mike Tauchman made it 7-0 and after Price walked Torres, he was finally yanked after allowing a season-high in runs and seeing his Yankee Stadium ERA since 2016 rise to 9.61.
Yankees starter A.J. Happ, like Price, just off the paternity list, cruised until there was one out in the fifth. He gave up two runs in both the fifth and sixth innings before Luis Cessa entered and got out of a jam. The righthander tossed 2 ¹/3 hitless innings to save the pen before Chad Green finished it with a scoreless ninth.
The Red Sox left The Bronx 14 ½ games behind the Yankees, a shell of the team that won the World Series last season.
“That’s what we’re supposed to do,’’ Judge said of the sweep. “We’re a first-place team. We went out there and took care of business.”
They’ll likely continue to do so on their upcoming road trip, which begins Monday against the dreadful Orioles and continues in Toronto.
But the Yankees have bigger goals in mind than racking up wins in the regular season.
“It’s been a crazy year that way, with the amount of things that have happened to guys physically, but it’s also been something that’s been a real rallying cry for us,’’ Boone said. “I think it’s not just brought a level of physical toughness to the room, but it’s forced guys to be mentally tough as well.”
They’ll be tested further, if they lose Torres, though Torres’ father took to Twitter to say his son is OK and will travel with the team to Baltimore.
“You can’t really think about it,’’ Judge said of the injuries. “You keep moving along. … We’ve still got a job to do and a lot of baseball to play in October.”