While the game time temperatures at the Stadium have recently cooled a bit, Giancarlo Stanton’s red-hot bat has not.
The Yankees slugger continued to mash opposing pitching on Tuesday night by driving in all of the team’s runs as they rolled past the Nationals, 5-1, at the Stadium.
The rightfielder hit a three-run double off the leftfield wall with two out in the third inning for a 3-1 lead and a 451-foot two-run homer into the leftfield stands in the sixth to make it 5-1.
Stanton’s five RBIs are a season high.
Luis Gil (2-1, 3.75) continued to look erratic in his fifth start of the season since returning with a strained lat muscle, but kept the damage low in five innings of one-run pitching. Yankees relief pitchers gave them four scoreless innings.
Leftfielder Cody Bellinger threw out a runner at the plate in the fifth that would have cut the Yankees’ lead to one run.
Anthony Volpe returned after being removed from the starting lineup in consecutive games, but went 0-for-4 and saw his slump extended to 1-for-32.
The Yankees (72-60) have bounced back from dropping the first three games of their four-game series against Boston with three consecutive wins.
They remain in possession of the second AL wild card. AL East-leading Toronto lost and the Yankees trail them by 4½ games. Second-place Boston won to stay a half-game ahead in the standings.
Stanton now has five home runs in his last seven games, seven in his last 11 and 17 for the season. In his 36 games since July 6, he is batting .351 with 16 home runs and 39 RBIs. Both of his hits came on full-count pitches.
“I feel like — and it’s saying a lot — he’s maybe as good as I’ve seen him, consistency-wise,” manager Aaron Boone said.
“It’s great to see he’s just in a great mental frame of mind, and incredibly focused and obviously delivering,” he added.
Asked if he agreed that this is his best stretch of hitting since his 2017 trade to the Yankees from the Marlins, Stanton said, “I haven’t done a huge dive into the underlying numbers, but if that’s in the conversation, it’s a good conversation to have.”
And based on just how he feels about the results, regardless of the numbers?
“I think you could say that,” Stanton said.
Gil still hasn’t found the form that won him the 2024 AL Rookie of the Year Award. He needed 92 pitches to get through five innings, gave up some hard-hit balls and put four men on base via walks. Still, Gil limited the damage enough for the Yankees to be in position to win the game when he exited with them ahead, 3-1.
He gave up one run on five hits and struck out five. Washington was 2-for-8 against him with runners in scoring position.
“With every outing, I’m feeling stronger and more confident out there,” Gil said through a translator. “There’s work to be done, but I feel like I’m on the right track and [have] no doubt in my mind I’ll get back to that 100% level that I was before.”
The Nats got their first run in the third inning when CJ Abrams singled to left and Robert Hassell III ran through the third base coach’s stop sign. Bellinger didn’t make a strong throw home because he saw the stop sign. That wasn’t the case in the fifth when James Wood tried to score from second an a Josh Bell single to left and Bellinger cut him down with ease.
“I’m glad I was able to make the most of the second opportunity,” he said.
Volpe played a nice game in the field and actually sent a thrill through the Stadium crowd that has recently been quite hostile to him when he flew out to the warning track in the eighth inning.
Volpe’s batting average is now .206, though he has 18 home runs and 65 RBIs. Asked about the recent treatment from home fans before the game, he told Newsday, “I love [that] the fans care as much about winning as I do. This is what it means to be a Yankee. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You’ve got to earn everything here.”
Notes & quotes: Righty reliever Fernando Cruz, out since late June with an oblique strain, was activated from the IL before Tuesday’s game. He entered in the sixth on Tuesday night and allowed two hits with two strikeouts in two-thirds of an inning . . . Lefthander Ryan Yarborough, out with an oblique strain since late June, threw 63 pitches in a start for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Tuesday, allowing two runs in 4 2⁄3 innings.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
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