Luke Voit, Jordan Montgomery help Yankees beat Braves
Luke Voit of the Yankees celebrates his first-inning three-run home run against the Braves with teammate Aaron Hicks at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
A rough five-game stretch in a typical baseball season is little more than a blip. In 2020, it’s 8% of the schedule and could sow seeds of concern. So after dropping four of the last five on the just-concluded road trip to Philadelphia and Tampa Bay, the Yankees needed to rediscover their winning ways.
Jordan Montgomery and Luke Voit made sure they did exactly that. Montgomery started and pitched six at-times brilliant innings and Voit anchored the Yanks to a lead by hammering a three-run homer in the first inning as they built an eight-run leadand held on to beat Atlanta, 9-6, on Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium.
Aaron Judge hit his ninth home run and Mike Ford delivered a two-run double in a three-RBI night as the Yankees built the lead to 8-0.
“We're going to go through periods in a season just like any other year where you know it might not be clicking for two or three days,” Ford said. “Obviously in a shortened season it's a little heightened and you want to get going even quicker. But up till those ([few] days, we were doing great. [We] got back on it today.”
The’comfortable margin coaxed manager Aaron Boone into giving Judge the last three innings off — rest after several games on turf — and to use lower-leverage relievers like David Hale and Luis Cessa. Both found enough trouble to allow the Braves to creep back and Boone used Adam Ottavino and Chad Green to escape jams. Zack Britton ended up pitching a scoreless ninth for his sixth save.
“We didn’t play our best game. We got sloppy in the second half of the game,” Boone said, referencing two errors that led to runs. “But a really good start by Monty and we swung the bats well.”
The contest against the Braves started a stretch for the Yankees where they will play 18 of 20 games in the New York area (including three against the Mets at Citi Field). Nine of the games are against a pair of last-place teams — the Mets and Red Sox — and the stretch could offer the Yanks a chance to create some distance between themselves and other postseason contenders.
“We had to get back to having better at-bats,” Voit said. “We kind of got away [from] that in Philly in Tampa, swinging out of zone and not getting guys on base with walks. Tonight, we controlled the zone a lot better, guys were hitting with runners in scoring position and [we] put the pressure on the pitchers. . . . I knew these guys were going to pick up where we left off before that last road trip.”
Montgomery succeeded in turning the page on his Aug. 6 start — the first of the four losses in that five-game stretch — when he allowed five runs over four innings in a 5-4 loss to the Phillies. He had allowed one hit over five scoreless innings before encountering trouble in the sixth when he gave up a pair of singles in front of Marcell Ozuna’s three-run home run.
The southpaw was unflappable as he negotiated his way out of trouble in the third inning. He issued a leadoff walk to Tyler Flowers and then induced an Ender Inciarte ground ball to third baseman Gio Urshela; but neither shortstop Gleyber Torres nor second baseman DJ LeMahieu covered the base and Atlanta ended up with two men on instead of two out. Montgomery escaped by getting Dansby Swanson to pop out, Travis d’Arnaud to strike out and Freddie Freeman to ground out.
In the fourth inning, he retired the side in order on six pitches
“I really just went after them,” Montgomery said. “I'm kind of trusting my pitches better, threw my cutter better, executed a lot more fastballs and then changeups late.”
Voit’s homer with LeMahieu and Aaron Hicks aboard rocketed 422 feet into the bullpen for a 3-0 lead. The two-run double by Ford, starting at DH for injured Giancarlo Stanton, was the key hit in a three-run third that made it 6-0. He would add a run-scoring double in the seventh for a 9-4 lead.
“I'm a very confident hitter. I know I can help this team win, given the chance,” Ford said. “I thought I did pretty well proving that last year with consistent at-bats. Three games in a row of at-bats definitely helped me [tonight] and go from there and hopefully keep playing.”
Judge’s homer, his ninth of the season, was off Braves reliever Bryse Wilson and hit the back wall of the home bullpen in right-center, a 432-foot shot. The Yanks upped the margin to 8-0 on Ford’s bases-loaded double-play groundout.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
