EVEN BAD TANAKA CAN’T STOP YANKEES
BALTIMORE — The Replacements?
The Expendables? The B-Team? Forget it, I’m not any good at nicknames. Someone smarter than me (setting the bar low) can come up with a handle for the Yankees’ never-ending array of guys fresh off the last Bus From Nowhere who have played a considerable role in getting them Somewhere. With each step forward, that Somewhere feels more special.
Another lousy performance by Masahiro Tanaka came with the silver lining of a 9-6 Yankees victory over the terrible Orioles Monday night, their sixth straight overall, as chants of “Let’s Go Yankees!” reverberated throughout Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
Rookie Mike Ford delivered the game-winning, tiebreaking homer, a solo blast to right field off Orioles southpaw Paul Fry, and three batters batters later, reserveturned-stud Mike Tauchman — a lefty batter like Ford — slammed his second homer of the night, both of them to the opposite field, a two-run shot to give the Yankees’ bullpen some breathing room.
“When guys come up here, they know they’re going to play,” Tauchman said afterwards. “They know that the team is rolling. Culturally, ... when you’re here, you’re going to be counted on and you have the full support of the team, and it’s just time to attack with a lot of positivity and enthusiasm.”
“That’s been a theme for us all year, you know?” Aaron Boone said. “It can come from a lot of different places.”
Yes, we know. Given the flurry of injuries they have overcome, it has been hard not to notice. The same goes for the Yankees’ American League East lead, which grew to nine games over the Rays.
The Yankees’ 6-1 lead came courtesy of yet another under-the-radar pickup, ninth hitter and second baseman Breyvic Valera, who delivered a two-run triple in the Yankees’ three-run f ifth. And after Tanaka and Tommy Kahnle teamed in the bottom of the sixth to give back their 6-1 advantage, the nonames went right back to work.
Ford, an undrafted free agent who returned to the team Saturday when Edwin Encarnacion fractured his right wrist, approached his first career at-bat against Fry — whom O’s manager Brandon Hyde summoned for the at-bat, replacing the more experienced Mychal Givens — with a strategy.
“I kind of stuck to my plan, was
waiting on one pitch and I got it,” he said. That one pitch was a slider, and it arrived — and hung — at 1-1. Ford sent it over the wall for the Yankees’ second lead of the night. Tauchman, whom the Yankees acquired back in March to cover for Aaron Hicks’ injury absence, followed with his dinger — with 32 homers at this ballpark in seven games this season, the Yankees set a record for the most round-trippers by a team in a road ballpark — and the Yankees’ bullpen took care of the rest.
The entirety of it might represent the best display of “Next man up!” we’ve seen in professional sports, and it would serve as cause for a full party if not for the Yankees’ continued worries in their starting rotation. Tanaka gave up plenty of hard contact — eight extra-base hits, for crying out loud — to the team that entered the night with the 12th-best offense in the American League. He now has an 11.57 ERA over his last four starts. The Yankees have less than two months to solve their rotation woes.
Consider the offense, on the other hand, already solved.
“I think it’s just, give the organization a lot of credit, just having guys ready at all different levels, mainly Triple-A,” Ford said. “There’s a lot of talented players there that are just waiting for their chance. When they get it, they’re trying to run with it. That’s a good thing for both them and the team.”
For sure. Now all they need is a nickname.