ABOVE WATER
With the postseason fast approaching, the Yankees were looking for two important bounce-back performances on Saturday: one from a lineup that hadn’t homered in five games and another from Deivi Garcia, who was coming off his worst outing in the majors.
They got both. By the end of their 11-4 romp over the Marlins in The Bronx, the Yankees had a much different feeling than when the day started. They came into the game having lost three straight and five of six.
But after the Blue Jays beat the Orioles on Saturday night, the Yankees still need a win or a Toronto loss Sunday to secure the No. 5 seed in the AL playoffs and avoid falling to the eighth spot, where they would have to face the Rays on the road in a bestof-three wild-card series.
“Whoever we play, you’re gonna have to play really good baseball for an extended period to win,’’ manager Aaron Boone said. “When we’re at our best, I’ll take our chances.”
On Saturday, the Yankees overcame a threerun deficit, started by Tyler Wade’s two-run shot in the fifth inning. A sevenrun sixth blew it open.
“Any spark to get us going, especially with the last game [Sunday],’’ said
Wade, whose blast ended the Yankees’ longest streak without a homer since 2014. “We know who we have in that room.”
Wade’s homer was the first of three in two innings. Aaron Hicks’ tworun blast an inning later gave the Yankees the lead and Luke Voit’s leagueleading 22nd later in the inning put the game away in that seven-run sixth.
“It’s been a struggle here this week,’’ Boone said. “For us to come out and pour it on is good. These guys know there’s much bigger fish to fry. No matter how we go into the playoffs, we can beat anyone.”
They certainly looked capable of that during the latter part of Saturday’s game. Voit and DJ LeMahieu continued to produce and Giancarlo Stanton provided a booming, game-tying double, evidence he might be ready to begin hitting.
And Garcia played an important role in the comeback.
The 21-year-old was coming off a rough outing in Boston last Sunday, when he allowed six runs in three innings.
He gave up three runs in the third — although he was hurt by a pair of bloop run-scoring singles.
But he mostly held the Marlins down and gave the Yankees’ lineup time to wake up.
With Gary Sanchez behind the plate again, Garcia used more of his arsenal than he did against the Red Sox, and it paid dividends.
“I wanted to be aggressive,’’ Garcia said through an interpreter. “I wanted to have the ability to execute pitches, especially in certain situations and not show any weakness out there.”
After calling his outing in Boston a learning experience, Garcia said he got together with Sanchez in the days following that start to formulate a different game plan for Saturday.
“I kept thinking about which way I wanted to attack them,’’ Garcia said. “One thing I thought about was to use the slider and curveball.”
He left a runner on first with two outs in the seventh and Adam Ottavino allowed the inherited run to score, but it was a solid showing from Garcia, who fanned seven and walked only one — the final batter of his 103-pitch outing.
In the coming days, Boone and his staff will determine who will start after Gerrit Cole and Masahiro Tanaka pitch the first two games of the wild-card series.
Boone said both J.A. Happ and Garcia will “play an important role if we’re gonna go far.”
And they’ll look for more days like Saturday from their lineup. If that happens, the Yankees’ recent struggles will be a memory. If not, they could face a short postseason.
“I don’t think it matters who we play,’’ Voit said. “I think we’re a tough matchup for anybody we face. When we get in the playoffs, anything can happen.”