TRIPLE THE PLEASURE
Yanks turn three and win 3rd straight as Gio delivers in Buffalo
BUFFALO — The Yankees pulled in Monday night as a team desperate for something to go right. When their offense finally kicked in, their pitching faltered. When their pitching was strong, their defense was weak. And they ran into a whole bunch of outs on the bases.
Three nights later, after Thursday night’s 8-4, come-from-behind win over the Blue Jays at Sahlen Field, the Yankees finally feel like they are headed in the right direction.
“I mean, there’s only so long, all of us can underperform or just take this beating inside and out,” GIancarlo Stanton said. “It’s not a fun environment in the clubhouse or going out there not playing to our ability. So it’s time you got to step up and start punching back.
“That’s what we’ve been doing, but one to two series ain’t gonna cut it,” Stanton added. “We just gotta gotta keep rolling.”
Gio Urshela homered and made two great defensive plays on the Yankees’ second triple play of the season. Aaron Judge made an amazing, jumping, home-run robbing play andStanton put it out of reach as the Yankees (36-32) clawed their way back for the win in their third straight game.
The Bombers claimed their first series sweep on the road (third overall this year) and their third come-from-behind win. They did it against a team that had given them trouble this year and that was ahead of them in the American League East standings.
“This is a big series for us,” Aaron Boone said. “It was exciting to pull this out tonight. And now we obviously go home to start a homestead. But this was a big series for us.”
They pulled it out with an absolutely stunning, leaping grab from behind the right-field wall by Judge, robbing Cavan Biggio of a two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth.
“Crazy,” Stanton said of Judge’s play. “That was definitely an awesome play. And it took the energy out of that other dugout, too. So a huge, huge play and definitely part of the reason why we won.”
It set up a huge inning for the Yankees against a horrible Blue Jays bullpen.
Rougned Odor, who came in after Gleyber Torres hurt his back, led off with a single and Stanton lined his 13th homer of the season over
the right-field fence. The Yankees added on with Chris Gittens, who got his first major-league hit (a home run) here two nights before, getting a pinch-hit, two-run single.
Gittens brought home another in the ninth on a sacrifice fly.
Michael King had wasted an early three-run lead. Urshela hit a two-run homer in the third and, after loading the bases in the second, the Yankees scored just one rujn on a groundout.
King was in trouble early Thursday night, with two on and in scoring position in the first. Then he got some luck when Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. hit a comebacker. The Yankee pitcher checked the runner at third and then fired off to first for the out. Marcus Semien, at third, hesitated, giving DJ LeMahieu a chance to throw to shortstop Torres at third base to get the Blue Jays’ second baseman in a rundown. After Urshela tagged Semien, he turned and fired back to third base, where Torres got Bichette.
It was the second triple play the Yankees turned this season, the last was on May 21 against the White Sox. It is the first time the Bombers have turned two in a single season.
Thursday night, things were going right for the Yankees. For Judge, who said the team had a real gut-check coming into this road trip after being swept by the Red Sox at home for the first time in a decade, the way they won these games meant something.
“Big time,” Judge said of this being an important series for them. “Think that shows what this team is made of. This whole year when we got down early we’ve been pretty flat. That is not the team we are. We’re a team that can come back 5-0, 3-0, doesn’t matter with this team. We started to show that a little bit in the Red Sox series, even though we didn’t do our job. This series, against a good club like this that’s had our number all year, we take care of business.”