Yankees hang on to beat Rangers after Judge, Rice home runs
admin_news
While the Yankees’ Monday night game in Texas was never a blowout, much of it felt like it was trending towards a fairly comfortable Bombers win. Ben Rice and Aaron Judge continued to be stalwarts in the Yankees’ lineup, each going deep to help build up a lead. Meanwhile on the mound, starter Max Fried was pretty stellar. He ended up going six innings, keeping the Rangers off the board, having allowed four hits and two walks. One of the runners he allowed even ended up the victim of one of his trademark pickoffs.
However, after Fried departed, the bullpen let things get way too close for comfort, as is they tend to do. In both the eighth and ninth innings, Texas brought the tying run to the plate. In the ninth, they even had the winning run up.
Eventually though, the bullpen got the required outs, as the Yankees picked up yet another victory on their road trip, downing the Rangers 4-2.
After getting kept off the board in the first two innings, it seemed like the Yankees had missed a chance in the third when José Caballero got caught trying to steal second for the second out of the inning. However, Trent Grisham kept the inning alive with a single that deflected off pitcher Jack Leiter and to safety. Rice and Judge then went back to back, drawing first blood on the game.
Rice’s blast tied Judge for the team lead with 10, and amusingly, the dead heat lasted only a couple moments because Judge followed with his own clout.
The following inning Jazz Chisholm Jr. got in on the action and continued his recent run with another homer.
Fried exited after six innings, as the Yankees went to the bullpen to start the seventh. That was also where the shutout ended. Camilo Doval came in and allowed a one-out solo home run to Joc Pederson for Texas’ first run of the game.
Tim Hill came in for the eighth and ran into some trouble. He issued walks to Ezequiel Duran and Josh Jung, allowing the Rangers to bring the tying run to the plate. Said tying run came up in the form of Corey Seager, who Hill got to ground out, but it was a bit of a hot shot.
With David Bednar on the hill, the ninth then got off to another scary start. Jake Burger reached on what was ruled a single to start the inning, after Chisholm got to a grounder but didn’t have much of a play on and threw wide. Pederson then seemingly also reached in not unsimilar circumstances, but Chisholm successfully threw to first on that play and on review, it turned out that the throw beat Pederson to the bag.
Bednar than came back and struck out Kyle Higashioka, but things got even closer after that.
After Josh Smith hit yet another grounder to Chisholm, the second baseman committed an error after booting it. Alejandro Osuna came up next and dinked a single into center. That scored one run and brought the potential winning run to the plate. Bednar finally managed to finish things off there, inducing a grounder to short that José Caballero safely fielded and threw to second for the final out.
With that, the Yankees bounced back from their Sunday loss and have now won nine of their last ten. They’ll try to keep that going tomorrow, when the Yankees and Rangers will continue their series tomorrow night at 8:05 pm ET. Cam Schlittler and Jacob deGrom are expected to be the starters for that one.
