And Just Like That, The Yankees Are Back In First Place
Just 24 hours ago we were waking up with a 7-game losing streak and tweets of some jerkoff in Boston changing the standings on an outdated scoreboard in a stadium that should be torn down. Now we’re back in first, ready to start a winning streak and it appears our 7th inning problem has been put to rest.
A big reason for yesterday’s win was Jordan Montgomery stepping up and being the stopper that the rotation needed. Normally you look for an ace to play that role, but a 5th starter doing it works just as well. Jordan gave us 5.2 innings, allowing just 2 runs, and thanks to some timely hitting could leave the game with the lead. Some people didn’t understand Montgomery coming out so early, but at 97 pitches and with Maldonado coming to the plate with a double and a home run already in the game, it was the smart call by Girardi. If that turned into another home run, it kills all the positive momentum that Jordan had built up and could have cost us the game as well as killed his confidence.
Chad Green was clutch to get us out of the 6th and after some insurance runs was able to stay in the game so Betances didn’t have to pitch 2 innings. As a result, Green may have set himself up to become the 7th inning man for a bit. He has never pitched on back to back days, but Girardi has said that he would feel comfortable trying it if Green only throws about 15 pitches on the first day.
In an effort to slowly bring Chapman back from injury, Girardi tried to save his arm while also giving Tyler Clippard the chance to dig himself out of a hole with a meaningless inning. Boy did that go bad. How bad? Well he made history on a 116 year old team.
Thankfully Joe did this in a low leverage situation and it has to be clear to everyone that until Tyler Clippard can figure his shit out in garbage innings, he can’t be trusted with the 7th inning.
On the offensive side of things, we were back to firing on all cylinders. 8 of 9 starters recorded a hit, with Didi and Holliday hitting home runs to get us the early lead. Holliday is not the long term solution at first base. But filling in once a week so he can keep Sanchez in the lineup while sparing him a game behind the plate and save the rest of us from having to watch Chris Carter play is fine with me. As the Yankees try to kill time to find out what is going on with Greg Bird, Austin Romine made a case to play some first with 3 hits and 2 RBI on a 6th inning double that blew the game open.
It’s just one win, but with Severino on the mound tonight and several guys on the Yankees having a history of success against Jesse Chavez, we should see another win and a full game lead in the East before we go to bed tonight.
PS: Todd Frazier has struggled this season but his last 4 weeks have been much better and at the right price, I wouldn’t mind going and getting him while also taking on David Robertson’s contract. The White Sox don’t want to have Frazier just walk at the end of the year and want out of the Robertson contract bad, so I think if the Yankees took the contract, Frazier wouldn’t cost much. That solves two problems for us.