Yanks’ ‘rallying cry’:
Though it has been been pummeled by injuries, New York has found a way to stay resilient atop the AL East.
NEW YORK – A couple of times early on in the Aug. 4 night, pockets of nostalgic Yankees fans serenaded Red Sox starter David Price with an old chestnut from the rivalry’s album.
“Who’s Your Daddy?!” could be heard around Yankee Stadium, famously chanted at Pedro Martinez.
And that’s before Price became deeply submerged in another Bronx nightmare, dragging the defending world champions further away from contention.
Price couldn’t retire any of the final seven Yankees he faced in a six-run third inning. And the Yankees’ early seven-run lead boosted them toward a 7-4 victory before 47,267 fans.
Of course, the Yankees couldn’t escape nine innings without two more injury scares.
Lifted for a defensive replacement in the eighth inning, Gleyber Torres exited with a core muscle issue and was examined at a local hospital. He was in the lineup for the next night in Baltimore.
And X-rays came back negative for Gio Urshela, who fouled a ball off his right knee and off his left shin during the same sixth inning at-bat.
The third baseman’s legs stiffened up and he was replaced defensively in the ninth.
“I think I’ll be good,” Urshela said.
What crisis?
A full week after the Yankees rotation failed them miserably – including a stretch of three straight losses to the Red Sox at Fenway Park – Aaron Boone’s club completed a four-game sweep of the Sox.
That had not happened in the Bronx since Aug. 6-9, 2009, the Yankees’ last world championship season.
Now, the third-place Red Sox are just trying to cling to a wild-card hope. They were 141⁄2 games behind the AL East-leading Yankees, a club that continues to withstand injury after injury to key players.
“It’s a credit to so many people across the board who have stepped up and impacted us winning games,” Boone said of his 72-39 club that is eight games ahead of the secondplace Tampa Bay Rays.
“That’s why anything that’s come up, whether it’s been injury or a bump in the road in the season, anything adverse that seems to happen to this group, they don’t flinch.
“And they know what the expectation is and they’ve gone out and delivered.”
Judge’s take
Aaron Judge spent two months on the injured list.
Now, he’s observing the head-spinning shuttle of players going on and coming off the IL, while also seeing how the next-man-up mentality has worked.
“You can’t really think about it,“Judge said of the injury situation. “If we keep trying to look back at these past injuries…we’ve still got a job to do, we’ve still got a lot of season left to play and a lot of baseball to play in October.
“We’re just going to keep moving it along,” Judge said. “Each guy’s just got to step up and keep doing their job, and that’s the coolest thing about this team. No one trying to take the load on them themselves.”
On the Yankees, “everyone’s trying to pass the baton and share the responsibility,” Judge said of a club that has won five straight games. “If I do my job, the other guy behind me is going to do his job.”
‘A rallying cry’
In acknowledging “it’s been a crazy year … with the amount of things that have happened to guys physically,” manager Aaron Boone added that the IL situation has “been a real rallying cry for us.
“And I think it’s not just brought a level of physical toughness to the room, but it’s forced guys to be mentally tough as well,” Boone said. “It’s part of the hunger that exists with those guys.
“Because they have the mind-set of nothing’s going to get in our way, nothing’s going to stop us.
“And they all kind of pull for each other and know that the next guy is expected to do the job.”