It’s been hard to overstate the importance of the Yankees’ next four series — all come against likely playoff teams, and all come as New York and Boston are clawing over each other trying to catch Toronto atop the AL East. This 12-game stretch got off to a pretty perfect start on Tuesday night, where Trent Grisham’s grand slam led the Yankees to a 7-1 win over the Houston Astros.
Houston starter Framber Valdez came into the game with just a single home run allowed to a lefty all year, and the lowest
home run rate overall in the AL. The Yankees, starting with Jazz Chisholm Jr., said enough with that utter woke nonsense:
That’s Jazz’s 27th of the year, and he should be one of at least four Yankees to reach the 30 home run mark, along with Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Trent Grisham — more on him in a moment.
One of my oldhead opinions is the value of the shutdown inning. When your offense gets you a run, or better yet multiple, your job as a starter is to get outs as quickly as you can in the next frame, and indeed Fried was able to do that. The lefty threw just eight pitches in the second, setting down the Astros in order and getting his team back in the batter’s box.
We got some drama in the fourth inning, with José Caballero at the plate and Jazz having just singled in front of him. Cabbie was hit by a pitch on the back shin, but home plate umpire Ramon De Jesus ruled that the Yankee utilityman went around on his swing. Caballero was tossed VERY quickly after a brief disagreement, and the club was down a man early. For what it’s worth, Aaron Boone didn’t seem to have his usual punch with umpires when Caballero was ejected.
The big swing came in the fifth inning, as Valdez allowed his second home run of the game against a lefty. The Yankees did a good job to load the bases with one out, although Aaron Judge could have hit hit single slightly less hard to allow Paul Goldschmidt to score. Giancarlo Stanton was called out on a high strike that Statcast did have in the zone, a big blow to your run expectancy chart.
Enter Trent Grisham:
I love this home run. The Crawford Boxes are exactly what you want to target at Daiken Park, and Trent has an oppo approach the whole way with his swing. It’s really hard to get pull lift on a sinker as heavy as Framber’s, so don’t try for pull lift — and hit it to the only place in baseball as power-friendly as Yankee Stadium’s 314 ft sign. That Jose Altuve is the one standing in left watching the ball fly out is just a cherry on top.
Max Fried really lost control of his pitches twice, walking Mauricio Dubón and hitting #9 hitter César Salazar to open the third inning. Fortunately, Jeremy Peña inexplicably bunted, right to the Gold Glover Fried. Max went to three, cutting down the lead runner Dubón before getting two more ground balls to retire the side. In his final inning, Fried again let the first two men reach.
He was starting to look gassed, and Aaron Boone came out for a quick mound visit but elected to stay with his man. I privately thought that was a mistake, but the Astros made another curious decision to validate Boone’s gut call. This time, it was César Salazar bunting:
When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, stay out of his way. Max Fried doesn’t get through seven innings of one-run ball without those two boneheaded bunts, but he made the right moves when given the questionable opportunities, and got the 21 outs.
Oh, you know what I said above, about the Yankees having four 30 home run hitters? Yeah, Jazz made it a little more likely in the eighth:
Paul Blackburn did exactly what you want relief depth to do, getting his six outs, NUMBER by strikeout and locked up the win without the Yankees needing to go to their high-level bullpen pieces.
Both Toronto and Boston won their games today, so all the Yankees did was hold serve, but this was a big win. The mark against the Yankees this year has been they feast on bad teams and stumble against good ones. There’s two more to go against the Astros, and 11 more to go in this important stretch, but you got the win, comfortably, against the second-best starter the other team has to offer.
With Fried and Blackburn having the nights they did, the Yankees as well set up pitching-wise for the rest of the series. They can lock up their first series win of the September Spar tomorrow on Amazon Prime Video, with first pitch coming at 8:10pm Eastern again. Will Warren draws the start for that one.
