The Yankees should be dead and buried by now. Caked in dirt. Barely breathing, and then the breathing ceases.
9-17 and heading home to face the bludgeoning Red Sox, who own them, the defending World Champions who have the perfect antidote to hard fastballs, and the team with the best record in the league. God, why do things just keep getting harder? We’re already struggling! Just leave us be!
Ten days later? 16-20. Hacking out of the hole with genuine grit and bat prowess. This never should’ve happened. But it all did. Several times.
This unbelievable homestand had everything you could want as a Yankee fan. Clutch hitting? For sure, welcome to 2016. Development of youth? Did you happen to catch Didi and Hicks? The first appearance of a dominant bullpen trio? Without a shadow of a doubt.
For those who love reruns, this homestand even contained the same exact game twice. Both of Masahiro Tanaka’s starts, one against KC and the other on Sunday, featured a battling Tanaka, a back-and-forth lead attained by clubbing longballs, a blown Yankee save, and a tension-releasing late, triumphant hit (by Chase Headley in the sequel!). Remarkable symmetry.
First, the Red Sox series. It’s not just me; the end of Game One felt like a season’s worth of negative feelings being released into the wind on the arms of one all-time Papi tirade. For the record, both strikes two and three crossed the plate in the zone. Fight me. I do not care. Red Sox fans have yet to accept one piece of bad news over the course of their team’s history. A really remarkable streak. Papi K’d. So did Hanley. Bank one win.
The next game, however, was when it all started to feel sustainable. The Yanks tossed up a C-lineup, featuring Austin Romine and a still-wilting Aaron Hicks. Well, guess who hit? You want to talk about another turning point? I present to you Didi Gregorius, with an 0-2 count and on the precipice of #RISPFail, knocking a bases-clearing double. Winner, winner.
The Royals, however, are the anti-Yankees. Surely their magical contact-hitting bats and youth factor will be able to outrun the Yanks, who were still running on fumes and reeling from a mysterious Severino stinkbomb. They simply don’t swing and miss, and they eat fastballs. If the Yankees don’t win the opening Nova game, they probably don’t win the Eovaldi start. They won both. They outhit the Royals, firmly. The only game they dropped was Pineda-helmed. And that’s fine. That doesn’t even count as an official Major League game, I’m told.
More importantly, during that series, the imagined bullpen became a reality. And I know the bullpen doesn’t hit. And I know the bullpen doesn’t hurl the game’s first six innings. But on Monday, when everyone in the ‘pen moved down a slot and deepened their slate, the team’s swagger changed. The Yankees, for the first time since 2009 (?) became an event. A casual observer might ask to turn on a Yankee game. No offense to the 2011 team, which was a very good team. But no impartial fan was fumbling for the remote, trying to get to Freddy Garcia in time.
But then, the White Sox series. They never hit Sale (and don’t worry, the still don’t). They never hit Quintana. That’s two quick losses, a smudge on the otherwise empowering week.
Well, Quintana was no Nova. The Yanks scattered their way to an historic Sunday. Boom. 7-3, and suddenly competitive baseball hardly feels like a faraway fantasy. And not for nothing, but Luis Severino is hurt, and that’s horrible. But perhaps it also explains things? Luis Severino currently has the highest ERA in MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. I’ll allow him to take a few weeks off.
So, that’s the Yankees now. The Boston Red Sox have had a phenomenal few weeks; there’s no doubt. However, I’m still waiting for them to face their first Major League Team of the season.
The Yankees, during a ten-day stretch that absolutely, according to all logic, reason, and previous trends should’ve ended their season, had their most powerful ten days of the season. I have no idea how the rest of the year turns out. But if this team possesses the ability to not only rise to a challenge such of this, but turn narratives on their heads by excelling in every field they so hideously failed in weeks earlier, we may have ourselves a season yet.
