Yankees don't need Snchez to be Superman
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The last time he played here, in front of the fountains and the politely awed Midwestern audience, Gary Sanchez was on the kind of epic roll few major leaguers ever know, certainly not that early in a career.
The last time was the last three days of August 2016, and it’s not enough to say Sanchez was raging hot entering that series, because he had come very close to inventing a new kind of baseball fire. In his previous 16 games he had hit 11 homers and driven in 18 runs, he’d slashed .475/.543/1.098. He was hitting .405. Mike Vaccaro The Beatles had played Kansas City at the height of their early fame, Charlie O. Finley paying top dollar to bring them to old Municipal Stadium. Sanchez wasn’t the Beatles. But he’d gotten Kansas City’s attention. They roared when his name was introduced. They’d been loud each of the 17 times he’d walk to the plate across three games. “He’s something to see,” his manager, Joe Girardi, had said when that series was over and the Yankees had won two out of three, Sanchez only scratching out three hits, two singles and a double. “He really is.” Funny, right? The Yankees returned to Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday night for another three-game series with the Royals, they say in first place, and there was another kid who had captured a lot of the locals’ imagination (as well as a Sports Illustrated cover). This time, it was Aaron Judge. Sanchez wasn’t an afterthought, because he’s still impossible to ignore.
He was just Ringo instead of John this time.
“I’m working hard,” Gary Sanchez said.
And if he isn’t quite the cartoonish Paul-Bunyan-with-a-bat right now that Judge has been across the season’s first two months, when he hits a baseball just right … well, it stays hit. What was it they said in “Bull Durham?” “Anything travels that far ought to have a stewardess on it, don’t you think?”
Sanchez reminded us of that in the top of the third inning, two on, none out, Jason Hammel challenging him with a fastball that probably needed five extra miles an hour and a few degrees of tilt to be
genuinely challenging. Sanchez creamed it 428 feet, onto the grassy knoll beyond center field. It gave the Yankees a 3-0 lead. That would be plenty on a night they’d ransack the Royals 7-1.
“He’s an impactful hitter,” Girardi said. “He can change the complexion of a game pretty quick. And he did tonight.”
It was a good time for Sanchez to be at his most impactful. He’d scuffled in the three games he’d played against the Astros over the weekend and still hasn’t hit a home run this season in Yankee Stadium. After missing a month he’d had his moments, and he remains imposing as hell waving his weapon in the batter’s box.
He just hadn’t been super-human.
Which is, you know, a pretty tough standard.
“He’s not off to the start he wanted and not off to the start we wanted,” Girardi had said before the game. “You’ve got to remember he played a week, got hurt, and now he has played [one-plus weeks]. I am not concerned about him. He will get it going on both sides of the ball.”
A few innings in, he made his manager a prophet, because CC Sabathia turned in his best outing in weeks (6 2/3 innings, zero runs, five hits) and he was effusive in praising Sanchez for calling terrific game. Though he, like everyone else, saves most of the effusion for what he can do with a bat in his hands.
“He can do damage every time he comes up,” third baseman Chase Headley said. “It’s good to see him get going.”
Good for Sanchez, too. A year after bringing a scorching-hot bat to Kauffman Stadium he merely brought his workaday bat, and that was plenty. The Yankees don’t need him to be Superman. Super is good enough. Super is plenty good enough. mvaccaro@nypost.com