Fortune smiles on Yankees in win over Mariners
The Yankees' Rougned Odor reacts to the dugout as he rounds the bases on his two-run home run against the Mariners during the sixth inning at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Aaron Judge knows almost no one believed them during those dark days in June.
After every brutal loss, every missed opportunity, the Yankees would preach the same thing: This team will turn around. We're too good to continue to perform this badly. All is not lost.
Plenty of fans and media members scoffed, but after yet another win — this one a 5-4 comeback victory over the Mariners at Yankee Stadium on Saturday, their fifth win in a row and 20th in the last 28 games — the scoffing has stopped.
"All year we’ve been saying stay the course, stay the course and keep playing our game, keep playing our ball," Judge said after the Yankees came back from an early 4-1 deficit. "We [knew] things would turn around. I just don’t think anybody outside of our room really believed it."
It sure does help that lately, it’s not just the regular plays that have gone their way but the strange, finicky ones, too. That, at least, was what happened in the sixth inning of a game that the Yankees looked very primed to lose.
The baseball gods again smiled on this team — this time in the form of a three-base error by Mariners rightfielder Mitch Haniger that led to the tying run and a mental error that allowed the go-ahead run to score.
Rougned Odor hit a two-run homer into the first row of the rightfield stands just inside the foul pole to bring the Yankees within 4-3 — after uppercutting the ball and going down on one knee, he stayed down and watched the 328-foot drive from the batter's box — and two batters later, pinch hitter Gleyber Torres hit a towering fly ball down the rightfield line. Haniger slipped on the crest between the grass and the warning track dirt and got his feet tangled, with the routine fly dropping just behind him for a three-base error as he fell.
Pinch hitter Kyle Higashioka tied the score with a ground-rule double to left and went to third on DJ LeMahieu's line-drive single to right. Anthony Rizzo then hit a potential double-play grounder to first. Ty France stepped on the bag for the second out, and as Higashioka headed home, LeMahieu simply stopped halfway to second base. Instead of cutting down Higashioka, France went after LeMahieu, who was more than happy to get into a rundown, and by the time the tag was applied, Higashioka had scored for a 5-4 lead.
"That’s kind of how I always play it," LeMahieu said. "I was kind of using instincts there."
The Yankees (61-49) moved a season-high 12 games over .500 and are 2 1/2 games behind the Red Sox (one in the loss column) for the first wild card and 1 1/2 games behind the A’s (one in the loss column) for the second wild card.
It certainly had seemed as if the Yankees' luck was ready to run out.
A lot of that had to do with Andrew Heaney, who momentarily picked up where he left off Monday, when he allowed four solo home runs in four innings. Abraham Toro led off the game with a double, and two outs later, Kyle Seager took advantage of the short porch in right, smacking an 0-and-2 curveball a few rows into the stands to give the Mariners a 2-0 lead. It was the fifth homer allowed by Heaney in his first 4 2/3 innings as a Yankee.
The Yankees got one back off former Met Chris Flexen in the bottom of the inning on Judge’s 421-foot home run to leftfield.
Heaney loaded the bases with one out in the second on a double by Jarred Kelenic sandwiched by two walks. A walk to Toro forced in a run and Haniger hit a long sacrifice fly to right that came within a few feet of clearing the fence for a grand slam.
The Yankees were in dire need of help from their starting pitcher, having used nine pitchers Friday and two of them — Zack Britton and Chad Green — for a second straight day. Heaney wound up retiring 14 of his final 16 batters and striking out nine in six innings to pick up the win.
"We’re playing for a lot and everyone is keenly aware of that," Aaron Boone said. "We show up. It’s about us. It’s about trying to figure out a way to get a win. That’s the kind of selflessness we’re seeing right now from guys. I had pitchers walking into my office today saying I can pitch . . . They’re hungry, they’re playing well."
And now everyone is starting to believe.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
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