Brian McCann’s two-run homer in the second inning snapped a few necks in the docile Yankee Stadium crowd. Jacoby Ellsbury’s steal of home, ill-advised on some levels, tied the score in fifth. McCann’s sixth-inning RBI single gave the Yankees a slim lead. Ivan Nova provided two-plus innings of shutout relief and Ellsbury’s double plated two in the eighth.
All of that was very welcome to a team that had lost three straight, seven of eight and was looking up at the rest of the AL East when Friday night’s action opened.
And it would have not mattered a bit if Joe Girardi didn’t have Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller to use late in the game.
Scroll through the departments that make up the Yankees and it is not close which is the most important. With the Betances/Miller entry, the Yankees are 6-9 after a 6-3 win over the Rays. Without them? A lot worse, that is for certain.
“We love our chances late in games,’’ McCann said of Betances and Miller protecting leads.
Why not? The righty-lefty combination has no peers and lately it hasn’t been a fair fight when they surface.
Of course, because of the lameness of the Yankees lineup that produced 18 runs in the previous eight games and opened the night batting .101 (7-for-69) with runners in scoring position in the previous nine games, Girardi hadn’t been able to hand Betances and Miller a lead since this past Sunday against the Mariners. They pitched with the score tied Tuesday in what turned into an extra-innings loss to the Athletics.
“I know we will turn things around, be patient and wait our chance,’’ said Betances, who fanned pinch-hitters Brad Miller and Logan Morrison on 0-2 breaking balls for the first two outs in the eighth and made Logan Forsythe look ill on a 85-mph off-speed pitch for the final out.
“When he is ahead in the count not many people are going to put the ball in play, never mind get a hit,’’ McCann said of Betances, who has registered 13 of his last 14 outs, and 19 of 21, via strikeouts.
Ellsbury, who didn’t start because Girardi is hell-bent on using Aaron Hicks against lefties so as not to burn out Brett Gardner and Ellsbury, made Miller’s ninth-inning gig a little easier by providing a three-run cushion.
After hurling his first pitch to the backstop, Miller got Brandon Guyer on a harmless fly to left and struck out Evan Longoria and Corey Dickerson to notch his fourth save in as many chances.
It’s hard to find anybody who believes Aroldis Chapman’s arrival on May 9 with a 100-mph fastball after serving a 30-game suspension for violating MLB’s domestic abuse policy won’t help the best part of the Yankees’ roster be better.
The blueprint will call for Betances to work the seventh, Miller the eighth and Chapman the ninth. How many times Girardi uses all three in the same game will be interesting to watch.
“Any way we get better is good,’’ Miller said. “Until he gets here we got what we got.’’
Which is the best advantage in baseball for a team that has plenty of warts until Betances and Miller arrive late.