The Yankees needed a blowout tonight. We had two ugly games to wash off ourselves, and with the Blue Jays having won earlier in the day, New York had to keep pace. It was a night that the club could have let all the various emotions — of the day’s place in history, of the stress of the playoff hunt, of the one particular fan in attendance — get the better of them. Instead, they spanked the Tigers and avoided a sweep with a 9-3 win.
Aaron Judge got us started in fine form:
At the time, that put Judge
just a single home run away from Joe DiMaggio on the all-time Yankee list but, give us just one minute. First we’re going to talk about a couple nice hits that gave the Yankees back the lead after the Tigers tied it in the second:
Ben Rice and José Caballero combined to bring in two more runs and get the lead up to 3-1, but even that wasn’t enough. Like I said, the Yankees needed a blowout, and Judge had a legend to tie:
One has to imagine Judge will pass Joe before the end of the year, but once he does he will have 130-odd to hit before he challenges Lou Gehrig at #3. If anyone could do it though, it would be Judge.
Speaking of the all-time home run lists, Giancarlo Stanton continued his trek toward 500:
Stanton’s 20th home run of the season came in just his 63rd game, and the highest number of games he can appear in this year is 79. 20 home runs in less than half a season is extraordinary output from your primary DH, and he’s done it while posting his highest OBP since 2021. What a year.
Everyone got in on the fun, with Austin Slater and Cody Bellinger driving in runs in the fourth inning. Jazz Chisholm’s bat died a hero on it’s own right, complimenting a heads-up double play he had turned in the top half:
Then again, a good Rorsach test is “good Jazz play” or “typical Gleyber Torres baserunning”.
I don’t remember a lot of Cam Schlittler’s start, he certainly bounced back well after that bad outing against Toronto. He delivered two quick shutdown innings after the Yankees scored, which longtime readers will know I put a lot of value on. He did hiccup a little in the second, allowing the Tigers to tie the game up, but cruised otherwise until the fifth.
Once there, some of the rookie still popped up. A single and two walks loaded the bases with two out, bringing up Riley Greene who had gone deep just the night before. With how shaky the bullpen has been in this series, even a four or five run lead wouldn’t have felt that great. Fortunately for us, Cam understood that too:
That inning did eat up a bit of Schlittler’s pitch count, but with such a big lead I was happy Aaron Boone left him in for the sixth inning. I was happier still that the right-hander answered with a 1-2-3 inning. That’s another plus of those big shutdown innings — you save your pitches so in the inning you do scuff up a bit, you have some reserve left.
Ryan Yarbrough took over in the seventh and pitched the rest of the way, allowing a solo shot and an RBI groundout. With….everything….we’d seen from the bullpen in the previous two games, it was awful nice to go from Schlittler to Yarbrough and lock the game up.
You all know what happens next. The Yankees head to Fenway for a big three-game set against the Red Sox, who they now have a 0.5-game lead on. The last, big series in this stretch starts on Apple TV+ at 7:10pm Eastern, and Luis Gil will be tapped to start.
