When Brian Cashman dismantled what remained of the “old
Yankees” at the trading deadline, transforming them into the “new Yankees”
overnight, logic would dictate that the team would go through a period of
growing pains today on their way to competing at a championship level tomorrow.
Well, tomorrow may be coming a little earlier than expected. Behind Gary
Sanchez, one of the “Baby Bombers” who is currently on an historic run, the
Yankees topped the second-place Baltimore Orioles, 14-4, at The Stadium on
Friday night.
Sanchez delivered right off the bat with a two-out single in the bottom of the first. Mark Teixeira followed with a home run deep into the bleachers to stake New York to a 2-1 lead. Then, in the second, the Yankees blew it open. Brett Gardner delivered a one-out, bases-loaded single to drive in two, and the next batter, Jacob Ellsbury, singled to drive in Ronald Torreyes. That brought up Sanchez again who—naturally—banged out a double to drive in Gardner and Torreyes to make it 7-1 New York.
Baltimore manager Buck Showalter called in Vance Worley to take over for starter Yovani Gallardo, but that didn’t stop the Bombers. Now it was time for the veterans to step up. Mark Texiera delivered an RBI single to put the Yankees up 8-1, and that was followed by a two-run homer by Chase Headley in the bottom of the fourth.
As they say in tennis, that was game-set-match.
With the win, the fourth-place Yankees improve to 66-61
(36-27 at home), and are 5.5 games behind first-place Toronto. More importantly, however, is that they are
now just 3.5 games behind Baltimore in the only race that matters—the wild card
slot that opens the door to October baseball.
Sanchez, currently hitting .403 with 10 dingers, 20 RBIs and
a crazy OBPS (1.309), was demoted to Scranton early in the season after getting
off to a slow start. But that was then and this is now, and the 23-year-old catcher
is the leader of the youth movement in the Bronx. Sanchez is quickly becoming
the face of this new team, which was transformed from ancient pretenders to
young contenders virtually overnight when oft-maligned GM Brian Cashman shed
the roster of age (Carlos Beltran, Yvan Nova, Andrew Miller, and flame-throwing
closer Adonis Chapman, a pending free agent) while bringing in the likes of minor-league
shortstop Gleyber Torres, minor-league outfielders Billy McKinney and Rashad
Crawford, and pitcher Adam Warren (from the Cubs); minor-league outfielder
Clint Frazier and minor-league pitcher Justus Sheffield, Ben Heller, and J.P.
Feyereisen (from Cleveland); and Dylan Tate, the No. 4 overall pick in the 2015
draft (from Texas).
In the span of seven days, the Yankees had gone from one of
the weakest farm systems in baseball to one of the strongest. At the time,
Yankee fans thought it was just a matter of sucking up losses in the short term
for, hopefully, a bright future for many years ahead. After all, it’s unheard
of for a team to be a “seller” at the trading deadline, and then contend for
the postseason after shedding itself of significant veteran talent.
This year, it seems, the Yankees may be re-writing those
rules.
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