Yankees earn 6th straight win behind Trent Grisham's grand slam, Anthony Volpe's two-run shot

CHICAGO — The player Aaron Boone calls “The Big Sleep” helped the Yankees put the White Sox to bed Friday night.

And give them their longest winning streak of the season.

Centerfielder Trent Grisham, given that nickname because of his unflappability on the field and uber-quiet demeanor behind the scenes, hit a two-out grand slam in the fourth inning to break open a tight game and send the Yankees to a 10-2 victory in front of 28,069 at Rate Field.

“How clutch he’s been,” Giancarlo Stanton said of what has stood out this season about Grisham, who has 28 homers, the second-highest total on the team behind Aaron Judge’s 41 and 11 more than his previous high. “He’s come through in huge moments.”

The Yankees (75-60), who have won six straight and 13 of their last 17 games, moved a half-game ahead of the Red Sox for the American League’s top wild-card spot and within three games of the AL East-leading Blue Jays as Boston and Toronto both lost Friday night. They are 15 games over .500 for the first time since June 14 (42-27) and two short of their season high.

“I’ve always said, baseball, it’s a wave. Up and down,” said Carlos Rodon, who spent the first seven years of his career with the White Sox from 2015-21 and allowed one run, six hits and two walks in six innings in his first outing since 2021 on the Rate Field mound. “You go through stretches where it’s really good and you win a lot of games in a row, and you go through stretches where you lose. You’ve got to be quick to turn the page and move on from the tough ones.”

There have been few tough ones of late as the Yankees have fattened up on a soft schedule.

In scoring double-digit runs for a third straight game and an MLB-leading 22nd time this season, the Yankees have totaled 35 homers in their last 11 games. They have scored 31 runs in the last three games and 53 in their last six.

“Just heavy at-bats from the jump [the start],” Boone said. “Just a ton of heavy, heavy at-bats.”

The Yankees worked nine walks against a White Sox pitching staff that collectively struggled with the strike zone and had one of their catchers, Korey Lee, pitch the ninth. He commanded the baseball the best of anyone in a scoreless inning, retiring Jose Caballero, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Ryan McMahon.

Anthony Volpe, in a 1-for-37 slump entering the series, went 2-for-3 with a sacrifice fly Thursday night and 2-for-4 with a homer and three RBIs on Friday night. Austin Wells, splitting time at catcher of late because of his season-long slump at the plate, also had two hits. The Yankees were outhit 12-7 and struck out 14 times but were never truly threatened.

Grisham’s second grand slam of the season — off  righthander Yoendrys Gomez, designated for assignment by the Yankees earlier in the season after breaking camp on the big-league roster — gave the Yankees a 5-0 lead. It was Grisham’s fifth homer in his last six games and his seventh in his last 10.

“I like when I can get my mind to this level,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun to just experience that, learn from that and produce that on a nightly basis. That’s what I’m striving for.”

Rodon (15-7, 3.18 ERA), a first-round pick of the White Sox in 2014 (taken third overall) who went 42-38 with a 3.79 ERA for them, became the first American League pitcher to reach 15 victories and is one behind the Brewers' Freddy Peralta for the MLB lead.

Gomez allowed five runs (four earned), two hits and six walks in four innings in which he struck out six. Of his 87 pitches, only 47 were strikes.

After the White Sox (48-87) scored once in the fifth, Volpe, Wells and Ben Rice had RBI singles in the sixth. Volpe’s 19th homer, a 406-foot two-run shot, made it 10-1 in the seventh.

“I thought Austin called a great game [and] defensively we played well,” Rodon said before smiling. “And once again, the offense does it, swings the bats and makes it easy for the pitchers to go out there, attack the zone and get outs.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

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.