ST. LOUIS — Maybe, just maybe, that was the one.
The Yankees, and it goes without saying their fan base, certainly hope so.
After the Yankees opened their three-game series against the Cardinals on Friday night with a 4-3 victory, Jazz Chisholm Jr. indicated the win could be the one that sends his team on the kind of lengthy stretch of quality baseball that has been missing for more than two months.
“I feel like we’re starting to click as a team,” said Chisholm, whose two-out, two-run homer highlighted a three-run first inning on Friday that gave Luis Gil the lead before he delivered a pitch. “I feel like the energy is starting to come back. Everybody’s up on the top step of the dugout every at-bat, and I feel like that’s what we really needed.”
It remains to be seen if the victory is just that — one victory — or something that sparks a prolonged period of good play.
After completing a three-game sweep of the Royals in Kansas City on June 12 — which gave them a 42-25 record, second-best in the American League — the Yankees brought a 23-32 record in the next 55 games into Saturday. They were seven games behind the AL East-leading Blue Jays, who beat Texas on Saturday afternoon, and 1 ½ games ahead of the Guardians (who played Atlanta on Saturday night) for the league’s third and final wild-card spot.
And it wasn’t as if Friday’s win in itself was particularly inspiring. After bolting to a 4-0 lead after three innings against the mediocre Cardinals, the Yankees flailed the rest of the way on offense, finishing 3-for-17 with runners in scoring position and leaving nine runners on base.
And there have been more than a few this-will-finally-get-them-going wins in the last month. The Yankees’ 6-5 walk-off victory in 10 innings on July 10 against the Mariners, a game in which they trailed 5-0 and were held hitless through seven innings, is one such example. A 12-9 victory on July 19 in Atlanta in which they trailed 5-0, 7-2 and 8-6 is another. Both ended up as a failure to launch an extended stretch of good baseball.
Still, Friday night’s victory was the Yankees’ fourth win in their last six games, and the schedule is inviting.
After this series against the Cardinals (61-62) come two games in Tampa against the reeling Rays (60-63), who entered Saturday night’s game against the Giants at 13-25 since July 1. A monster four-game series at home against the Red Sox, who entered Saturday night two games ahead of the Yankees for the second wild-card spot, follows the Rays, but after that are three games at the Stadium against the Nationals (50-73) and four games against the White Sox (44-78 entering Saturday) in Chicago.
Not that the focus is a schedule that, on paper, lightens up. Not for a team that has struggled to stack wins together.
“We just need to win,” general manager Brian Cashman, who is on this trip with the team, said late Friday afternoon at Busch Stadium. “To state the obvious . . . we’ve got to win tonight’s game and keep it simple, one game at a time, but then string together win after win.”
Said Chisholm: “We’re going to keep on going. We’ve got to keep the tempo up, we’ve got to keep on stepping on them. We can’t let up. We can’t play down to anybody. We got to keep going because we’ve got to make the playoffs and win the World Series.”
One victory over an average team doesn’t suddenly make the latter suddenly seem more achievable, but it might be a starting point for something. Might be.
“We just haven’t played good baseball. It’s come in all different forms at different times,” Cashman said Friday. “Keeping runs off the board and putting more runs on the board against our opponent, there’s a lot of different ways that happens, but we just haven’t done it enough. We’ve had a bad run at it, but it’s a very long season, and, obviously, we have a chance to still accomplish what we want to accomplish.”
Cashman said the purpose of him joining the team here wasn’t for motivation.
“Everything that needs to be said has been said. They know what they’ve got to do and what they’re capable of,” he said. “They hear it, they know it and they’re fighting through it. Hopefully sooner [rather] than later they can put some smiles back on some people’s faces with some consistently good play of baseball.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday’s sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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