Last night, the Yankees began a 4-game home series with the struggling Kansas City Royals. They should have won the game easily. But, after a great 1st half of the season, since the All-Star Break, the Yankees have had nothing come easily.
Jameson Taillon started, and went 6 innings, allowing no runs on 4 hits, 2 walks, and 8 strikeouts. Ron Marinaccio pitched a perfect 7th and 8th. Clay Holmes pitched a scoreless 9th. There you go: A shutout.
No, there you don't: It doesn't matter if you go 9 innings without allowing a run, if you don't score any runs yourself. And the Yankees didn't. Aaron Judge drew a walk and stole 2nd in the 1st inning. Gleyber Torres singled in the 4th. Anthony Rizzo was hit by a pitch in the 7th. That's it: Over the 1st 8 innings, the Yankees had 3 baserunners, 1 of them getting a hit, and only that 1 getting past 1st base. Pathetic.
And the bottom of the 9th started like it was going to be one of those nights. You know the type: When your team doesn't hit enough, and you lose in extra innings because of the stupid "ghost runner" rule, or because a reliever you usually count on falls apart. Andrew Benintendi cemented an 0-for-4 night in his 1st game as a Yankee by flying out to left.
The batter was Judge. I thought I could see what was coming. He takes a strike 1 right down the pipe. Then he gets thrown a pitch that is outside, possibly also low, no way is it a strike, but the plate umpire calls it strike 2. Then, knowing that he's never going to get the call going his way, Judge has to swing at the next pitch, and it's purposely thrown very low and very away, and he misses for strike 3.
That's not what happened. Here's what happened: Royal reliever Scott Barlow put his 1st pitch right in Judge's kitchen, and he cooked it. 431 feet into the left-field Bleachers. Home run. Walkoff. Ballgame.
It was Judge's 39th home run of the season, putting him on a pace to hit 63 for the season. It was also his 3rd walkoff homer of the season, tying a Yankee record held by Mickey Mantle. (Oddly, that was in 1959, a season in which the Yankees didn't even come close to winning the Pennant.)
Usually, when a condemned man is pardoned, it's the Governor who pardons him, not a judge. This time, it was Aaron Judge who kept the Yankees, guilty of gross negligence at bat, from the death penalty. There have been plenty of games the Yankees deserved to win that they've lost. This one, they deserved to lose, but they won it, and I shall gladly take it.
Yankees 1, Royals 0. Or, as they would say in English soccer, One-nil to the Pinstripe Boys. WP: Holmes (5-1). No save. LP: Barlow (4-3).
The series continues tonight. Gerrit Cole starts against Kris Bubic.
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