Marcus Stroman's best start of season leads Yankees past Atlanta
Yankees starting pitcher Marcus Stroman delivers to an Atlanta batter during the first inning of an MLB game in Atlanta on Sunday. Credit: Erik S Lesser/EPA/Shutterstock
ATLANTA — Aaron Boone likes questions about which relievers are available — or unavailable — for a given game almost as much as he enjoys queries about slumping players.
But before Sunday’s game against Atlanta, even Boone allowed that his bullpen was “a little short down there today.”
That was the result of using Ian Hamilton as an opener in Friday night’s loss — along with the three relievers that followed — and needing five relievers after Will Warren’s 3 2⁄3-inning outing in Saturday night’s comeback win.
In short, the Yankees were just a notch below desperate for Marcus Stroman to provide a quality outing with some length on Sunday afternoon.
He more than delivered.
Throwing six stellar innings in his best start of his season, Stroman, backed by Aaron Judge’s 36th home run and RBI hits from Paul Goldschmidt and Jazz Chisholm Jr., lifted the Yankees to a 4-2 victory over Atlanta that gave them a series win in front of 40,125 at Truist Park.
Judge’s 351st career home run tied Alex Rodriguez for sixth place on the Yankees’ all-time list. Yogi Berra is fifth with 358.
But it was Stroman who shined brightest on Sunday.
“That’s kind of how I came up was you take the ball and you go six, seven innings as a starter,” he said. “That’s always my goal, but definitely an emphasis on today just being that we were a little thin [in the bullpen].”
How thin?
Boone said afterward that he was staying away from Luke Weaver, Jonathan Loaisiga, JT Brubaker and Scott Effross.
“It was really just Hamilton to [Tim] Hill to Devin [Williams] was the formula,” Boone said. “And if we needed length, we were going to have to go with Allan [Winans] at some point . . . obviously, a great job by Stro.”
Stroman (2-1, 5.64 ERA) allowed Boone’s “formula” to play out, allowing one run, five hits and zero walks in a 95-pitch outing in which he struck out four. After missing more than two months in the first half with left knee inflammation, he is 2-0 with a 3.00 ERA in four starts.
Hamilton, who was not good in the opener role in Friday’s 7-3 loss, pitched a 1-2-3 seventh on Sunday and Hill threw a scoreless eighth. Williams, who allowed a run in a non-save situation in Saturday’s 12-9 victory, gave up a 456-foot leadoff homer by Ronald Acuna Jr. in the ninth but then retired three straight to record his 14th save in 15 chances.
The Yankees (55-44) leave town feeling relatively good about themselves entering a three-game series against the AL East-leading Blue Jays — who have won 10 straight at home — that starts Monday night in Toronto. The Blue Jays, who own a three-game lead over the Yankees, swept them in four games at Rogers Centre from June 30-July 3.
“Big series win, especially going into Toronto, who’s leading the division,” Judge said. “It’s a good time to start getting hot.”
The Yankees got off to slow starts in the previous four games, going 11-for-80 and scoring one run in 25 innings against starting pitchers, but they gave Stroman the lead before he delivered a pitch as Judge hit a 409-foot homer to right-center off Grant Holmes with one out in the first. Goldschmidt improved to 16-for-46 (.348) in July with an RBI single later in the inning.
Third baseman Jorbit Vivas got hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in the top of the sixth to give the Yankees a 3-0 lead and Matt Olson’s 442-foot homer to right in the bottom half made it 3-1. Chisholm’s two-out RBI double to left-center restored the three-run lead.
Giancarlo Stanton went 3-for-5 and has a .393/.469/.786 slash line with three homers and nine RBIs in his last nine games.
Stroman faced a jam in the third when Michael Harris II led off with a single and Nick Allen bunted for a single, but Vivas charged across the foul line and laid out to make, in Boone’s words, a “Superman-style” catch on a bunt attempt by Jurickson Profar. Stroman took care of the rest, snaring Olson’s hard comebacker and starting an inning-ending 1-6-3 double play, with Anthony Volpe making a nice turn after grabbing a high throw.
“To have him lay out there, I feel like the momentum kind of shifted in our favor,” Stroman said. “To be able to get out of that inning was huge.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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