Midnight never comes for the Yankees.
Luke Voit and Gio Urshela have not turned into pumpkins. Time has not revealed them as aberrations. The clock ticks on the season and Voit and Urshela embed themselves on a championship contender. Heck, the Yankees are a championship contender, in part, because they have Voit and Urshela.
Which is startling.
On June 11 last year, Voit was in the midst of a two-day call-up by the Cardinals before returning again to Triple-A. Urshela, then an injury-fill-in Blue Jay, had one start left in his major league season before a return to the minors.
Both migrated to the Yankees in under-the-radar deals during a five-day span bridging last July to August.
On June 11 this year, they turned around the Subway Series opener with fourth-inning homers off Zack Wheeler. Voit and Urshela combined for seven RBIs in the first game of a doubleheader Tuesday in a 12-5 Yankees victory over the Mets.
Imagine if a year ago I told you the Yankees would be thrilled to have Voit and Urshela as their regular corner infielders. Imagine if in the offseason when you could have gotten a loud contingent of Yankees fans to bellow for the acquisition of Paul Goldschmidt and especially Manny Machado that 40 percent of the way through this season Voit would have a higher OPS and Wins Above Replacement than Goldschmidt — the guy St. Louis acquired because it did not believe in Voit — and that the same would be true for Urshela over Machado.
“It’s pretty cool what they are doing,” Aaron Hicks said.
For just more than $1 million, Voit and Urshela have joined the resurgent Gary Sanchez and the persistent DJ LeMahieu to keep a Yankees offense that has mostly played without Hicks, Didi Gregorius, Miguel Andujar, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton productive. Through 65 games, the 2019 Yankees had scored two more runs than the 2018 Yankees.
“No matter who is hitting one, two, fifth or eighth [in the lineup] we are a feisty bunch,” Voit said.
Urshela was batting seventh in the Tuesday opener. He came up with one out and one on and the Yankees trailing 4-2 in the fourth. To that point Wheeler had been mostly good, the ball exploding easily out of his hand. But Urhsela turned on a 96 mph sinker for his fifth homer to tie the score.
A two-out throwing error by Todd Frazier was followed by a four-pitch walk to Hicks as Wheeler worked around him. Made sense. Wheeler had whiffed Voit the first two at-bats, overwhelming with a 93 mph slider and 99 mph fastball.
“He didn’t give me too much to hit and finally gave me something in that third at-bat,” Voit said. “So it is kind of fool me once, fool me twice, then the third time I’ll hit you finally.”
Wheeler hung a slider. Voit, the designated hitter in Game 1, crushed it 412 feet. It gave the Yankees a 5-4 edge. It also gave Voit 16 homers this year after hitting 14 from Aug. 24 onward last season. Only NL MVP Christian Yelich of the Brewers had more in that time frame than Voit’s 30. As a Yankee, in 102 games, Voit was hitting .288 with a .961 OPS.
“Organizationally, he was a guy we identified and felt like he was capable of this,” Aaron Boone said. “He came here and took advantage of an opportunity that didn’t exist before and all we have seen of him is a guy with tremendous power to all fields and a guy who controls the zone. That hasn’t stopped since he got here. Frankly, it was who he was as a minor leaguer.”
Urshela has less proof, 55 games as a Yankee. But after also delivering an RBI single and double as the Yankees scored 11 of the final 12 runs of this game, Urshela’s average was up to .320, his slugging percentage at .479, his defense a hot-corner godsend and any lingering doubt shedding. He has capitalized on the injury to Miguel Andujar as surely as Voit did on the one to Greg Bird.
“We felt quality contact in minors could translate and he has made some adjustments in his offensive game to translate it successfully,” Boone said.
Boone said he had no set number of games or plate appearances to believe in a player. Each case was different and so he wants to know the story and trust his eyes. And what the eyes of the Yankees manager are seeing in Voit and Urshela are above-average performers who have helped the club weather an injury spate that could have devastated the 2019 season.
You can’t spell Fluke without l-u-k-e, but you cannot define Yankees success this season without Voit and Urshela.