YANKS WORK EXTRA BUT FALL SHORT:
Yanks fall short in zany series finale
We have been saying for weeks what a fun and full-of-surprises story the Yankees have provided throughout April. Fittingly, the first month of the season then came to a close with their wackiest game to date, even if everyone knows they can’t ultimately win every day in what has been an unexpectedly charmed start to 2017.
Despite some unconventional late-game pitching maneuverings by Joe Girardi - yes, that was reliever Bryan Mitchell manning first base out of necessity between separate oneinning stints on the mound — the Orioles scored three times in the 11th to avoid a weekend sweep and move back into a first-place tie with the Yanks with a 7-4 victory at the Stadium.
“We were short on pitchers. So I knew I had to maybe do something unorthodox…(I was) trying to win the game,” offered Girardi, whose team still heads into May with a 15-8 mark, sharing the AL East lead with Baltimore. “We’ve managed to win 15 of the first 23 games, so a lot of things have worked well.”
On a bizarre baseball Sunday locally, in which the Mets coughed up 23 runs and possibly lost ace Noah Syndergaard to injury, Yankees fans should be further emboldened by their team once again showing it’s never out of a game with another ninth-inning rally to force extra innings.
Just as Starlin Castro had tied Friday night’s series opener with a down-to-one-knee homer in the ninth — setting up Matt Holliday’s “true Yankee” walk-off moment one inning later — Didi Gregorius followed Buck Showalter’s ejection (over a called balk) and stroked a tworun single for the Yanks to forge a 4-4 tie after they’d stranded runners on base all afternoon (11 of them through eight innings and 15 for the game).
As Girardi explained, using Mitchell at first base after he’d tossed a scoreless ninth “was the only way I could do it,” with fellow bullpen arms Tommy Layne and Adam Warren unavailable following heavy workloads previously in the series.
With Aroldis Chapman working the 10th, but Girardi not wanting him to pitch beyond that, Mitchell borrowed Greg Bird’s glove and remained in the game, replacing Chris Carter at first base, a position he claimed he hasn’t played since high school.
“I got a strikeout pitcher on the mound that I feel good about, and this way the chance of him handling a ball are probably not too good,” Girardi said.
As these things go, of course Mitchell was tested right away, and was charged with an error for botching Wellington Castillo’s foul popup. “I guess I should have expected the first one to find me…But that was pretty intense,” he said.
Two batters later, Mitchell got another chance and snared another popup from Jonathan Schoop, eliciting roars from the crowd, which he admitted made him “laugh to myself a little bit.”
The laughter dissipated quickly when Mitchell returned to the mound in the 11th. The O’s rapped three hits and plated three runs to retake the lead after the Yanks had left the bases loaded one inning earlier — with breakout slugger Aaron Judge fanning against ex-Met Logan Verrett.
“You never know what to expect. It’s part of the game, so you’ve got to be ready to do whatever,” Mitchell said. “But I think we have that feeling we can win every game, honestly.”
Indeed, this odd loss notwithstanding, the questions posed to GM Brian Cashman earlier in the day and to Girardi afterward were whether they’ve seen enough to fully believe this success and these contributions from all across the Yanks’ revamped roster are sustainable for the whole year.
“Can’t you just enjoy it?” Cashman fired back good-naturedly before the game. “We’re enjoying coming to the ballpark. We’re enjoying going to bed and getting a good night’s sleep every night because in many cases we’re going to bed with our head on our pillow with another ‘W’ in the win column.
“But listen, when you’re playing extremely good baseball, there’s nothing to make us believe right now we can’t keep that going.”
No argument here with the GM’s assessment, especially, if the Yanks continue to get production up and down the lineup with Gary Sanchez on the way back — as well as the requisite starting pitching they’ve mostly received from a rotation that has spent the past few weeks answering the various and legitimate questions raised all winter and spring.
Certainly, Jordan Montgomery continues to appear perfectly serviceable in the No.5 spot. The rookie lefty carried a 2-1 advantage into the sixth before walking the first two batters he faced, and replacement Jonathan Holder failed to, well, hold the lead this time around for a three-run turnaround inning for the O’s.
But then came Didi, and then came Mitchell’s adventure, even if the latest uplifting win wasn’t meant to be to finish off what Gardner termed “a pretty darn-good” month of baseball for the Yanks. “Nobody gets trophies for anything in April, but I’ll take how we’re playing right now,” Cashman said. “I feel like we’ve got some good momentum we’re building, and hopefully we can add to it rather than worry about it getting derailed at some point.”