Sloppy fielding and quiet bats usually pave a road headed for defeat.
Unless a team receives the type of pitching Jordan Montgomery and four relievers delivered Saturday when the Yankees slipped past the Orioles, 2-1, in 10 innings at Yankee Stadium.
The strong arm show carried the Yankees to their fourth straight victory. The third win in less than 24 hours pushed the Yankees’ lead to 4 ½ lengths over the Orioles for the final AL wild-card spot. It leaves them a half-game behind the second-place Blue Jays in the AL East, after the Jays’ 3-2 win Saturday night over the Mets in Buffalo.
“Obviously, they were the story today,’’ Aaron Boone said of Montgomery, Chad Green, Zack Britton, Aroldis Chapman and Jonathan Holder, who limited the Orioles to four hits and had to work around three errors and right fielder Mike Tauchman diving for Ryan Mountcastle’s sinking liner in the eighth inning, which resulted in a two-out double that should have been a single. Britton settled the situation by getting Pedro Severino on a come-backer to the mound. “Really good bounce back outing for Monty.”
Montgomery was coming off three subpar outings in which the Yankees dropped all three and had given up 16 hits, eight earned runs and three walks in nine innings.
But after escaping a shaky first inning by striking out the final two batters with runners on first and second, Montgomery cruised until the sixth, when a rare error by left fielder Brett Gardner led to an unearned run that tied the score, 1-1.
Montgomery credited a smoother delivery as the reason he gave up three hits and struck out a career-high nine in 5 ²/₃ innings.
“I tried to be as smooth as possible in the delivery,’’ said Montgomery, who retired 11 straight until he failed to field DJ Stewart’s bunt toward third starting the fifth.
When Mountcastle’s bloop over a drawn-in Yankees infield scored Hanser Alberto and tie the score, 1-1, Boone called for Green, whose last outing resulted in him giving up four runs (three earned) and two walks in one-third of an inning against the Blue Jays on Monday.
The hard-throwing right-hander looked nothing like that Saturday when he retired four of the five batters he faced and pitched around a throwing error by third baseman DJ LeMahieu.
“Definitely want to get it off your chest and the best way is to move past it,’’ Green said of the horror show in Buffalo.
Chapman followed Britton with a perfect ninth.
Holder retired three straight batters after Andrew Velasquez started the inning on second base.
“They had their opportunity and didn’t get it done,’’ Luke Voit said.
Thanks to Voit the Yankees didn’t waste their chance, which was aided by a wild pitch from Hunter Harvey to Voit with nobody out that moved LeMahieu from second to third.
“The guy throws 99 mph and the shadows are tough. Once it gets to 4 o’clock the shadows creep across the plate and it is tough,’’ said Voit, whose fly ball to center was plenty deep to deliver LeMahieu from third to home with the winning run. “Guy has life on his fastball and you got to be ready. I faced him in Baltimore and I knew what he was going to do and it was nice the first pitch was a wild pitch because all I had to do was get the ball in the air.’’
In the end it was a bat that won it, but without the performance by Boone’s pitchers, the Yankees would have been looking to start a winning streak Sunday instead of hunting for a four-game sweep.