Yankees’ anemic offense finally breaks through in win over rival Rays
After too many nights when they have struggled to touch average-at-best starting pitchers, the Yankees turned around on Wednesday and knocked a Cy Young candidate out of the game after four innings.
Then their own Cy Young candidate — and the current favorite — took care of the rest to snap a three-game losing streak.
Anthony Volpe and Giancarlo Stanton hit home runs off Shane McClanahan, while Gerrit Cole got better as the night went on, combining to lift the Yankees to a 7-2 win over the Rays in The Bronx.
Volpe clubbed a two-run home run in the bottom of the third, and before the inning was over, Stanton added a three-run homer to put the Yankees up 5-2 on the lefty McClanahan.
“Gosh, Shane is so good, so anytime you can scrap back in a game like that after I put them in a [2-0] hole, it’s a big lift for us,” Cole said after throwing seven strong innings to lower his ERA to 2.64. “It just energized us.”
Stanton later drove in another run on a single in the seventh inning, giving him four RBIs a day after the Yankees (56-52) failed to add a hitter by the trade deadline.
Instead, their playoff hopes are banking on improvements from within, a more consistent Stanton being chief among them.
“That’s what we need — we need Big G to be a menace in the middle,” manager Aaron Boone said.
Volpe also went 3-for-4 while Gleyber Torres added three hits and two runs of his own — the second a swiping of home on the back end of a double-steal in the seventh — to help the Yankees avoid being swept by the Rays (66-45).
Of course, for the victory to mean anything, the Yankees — who remained 3 ½ games back of the final AL wild card — will have to build off of it with results Thursday in the opener of a four-game series against the Astros.
Aside from a sweep two weeks ago of the Royals, one of the worst teams in baseball, the Yankees have not won two consecutive games since July 3-4 against the Orioles.
“It’s just sticking to the same approach,” Volpe said. “We’ve got a good team coming into town, I think everyone’s pumped up. We’re just going to stick to it, do our homework and prepare the way we prepare. But I think everyone would be lying to you if they said that finally getting some good results doesn’t help.”
At least for one night — reminiscent of the kind of at-bats they put together the last time they won, on Saturday in Baltimore — the Yankees worked deep counts and forced McClanahan (who entered the night 11-1 with a 3.00 ERA) to throw 82 pitches across four innings.
The Rays ace was also dealing with some forearm tightness, he later told reporters.
Cole, meanwhile, gave up a two-run, third-deck home run to Wander Franco two batters into the game. But from there, he only strengthened his status as the AL Cy Young favorite, turning in seven quality innings while striking out eight.
The Yankees’ ace got some help from left fielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who threw out a pair of Rays who were trying to stretch singles into doubles, and Harrison Bader, who made a sliding catch on the warning track in the sixth.
But the biggest boost came from the Yankees’ offense, which has too often stayed silent.
In Cole’s last start, they wasted his seven shutout innings in a 1-0 loss to the Orioles, but on Wednesday it was a different story against McClanahan.
“He’s a nasty pitcher,” Stanton said. “We gotta wear pitchers down. Get them out of the game early, get into that bullpen and just grind out at-bats. Over and over again, make it tough.”
That task will only get more challenging against the Astros, but the Yankees need to stick to it if they are going to save their season.
“We’ve had some of these games, now it’s about trying to string them together,” Boone said. “Hopefully we can put together a consistent week. We know we got a good team coming in, more good pitching coming our way, but hopefully we can at least continue to make it difficult on especially opposing starters.”
