At this rate, drug stores around the tristate area may be sold out of Tums by Wednesday morning.
But for the second straight night Tuesday, the Yankees held on by the skin of their teeth.
On a night when David Bednar and Fernando Cruz were both unavailable because of recent workloads, the Yankees bullpen was asked to cover four innings with a two-run lead, and they did so — just barely.
Things got hairy for Camilo Doval in the ninth inning, letting in a run and putting the tying run 90 feet away before escaping as the Yankees beat the Blue Jays 5-4 in The Bronx.
“That’s what makes baseball fun,” said Ben Rice, whose two-run home run in the fifth inning was the difference. “Of course we’d rather it be a nice 1-2-3 [inning], but the reality is it’s not always going to be that way. When they’re threatening with runners in scoring position and trying to tie the game up, it’s our job to lock it in and stop them. That’s what makes it fun.”
After Ryan McMahon tied the game in the fourth inning with a three-run homer — snapping an 0-for-24 skid — off Dylan Cease, Rice put the Yankees (30-19) ahead 5-3 in the fifth with a two-run shot against the Blue Jays ace, his 16th of the season.
The Yankees then held on from there after Will Warren gave them five innings, turning to their recently beleaguered bullpen to get the job done — a night after Bednar nearly blew it in the ninth — as they took the first two games of a four-game set against the Blue Jays (21-27).
They went from Tim Hill to Jake Bird to Brent Headrick for three shutout innings before Doval made things difficult by putting runners on the corners with no outs and the top of the order due up.
George Springer hit a comebacker to Doval that he got a glove on, allowing him to get the out at first, before Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a sacrifice fly to make it 5-4.
Inexplicably, Ernie Clement did not tag up from second to third on the play, which loomed large.
Daulton Varsho came up next and hit a chopper to the right side between Ben Rice and Jazz Chisholm Jr. Rice dove, taking him out of the play, before Chisholm fielded it, but Doval was late covering first, allowing Varsho to reach safely.
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But Doval finally got the third out as Kazuma Okamoto grounded out to end it.
“That’s what I want to do, just show the team that I can do this,” Doval said through an interpreter after his first save of the season. “That when they give me a tough situation like that, they can give me the ball and trust in me.”
While Rice’s bat saved the day, he also provided some clutch defense to help out Bird in the seventh inning, when Tyler Heineman led off with a grounder down the first base line.
Needing his full extension as he dove to his left, Rice snagged the bouncer, then got up and flipped to Bird for the out.
That proved to be critical as Bird later hit a batter and Headrick gave up a single — putting runners on the corners but not scoring a run — before Headrick escaped the jam.
“Off the bat, I’m just like, ‘Oh, he’s rolling that down the line,’ and there’s Benny,” said manager Aaron Boone, who was ejected after the seventh inning for arguing a pair of calls with second base umpire Brennan Miller, the subject of Boone’s memorable “Savages in the box” rant.
“It’s going to be tougher to piece that thing together [if Rice doesn’t make the play.”
After Warren gave up three runs in the top of the fourth, the Yankees immediately picked him up in the bottom half. Aaron Judge led off with an automated ball-strike system challenge-assisted walk.
He drew a full count, then got rung up by home plate umpire John Tumpane for strike three — only to begin walking to first as he tapped his helmet for the challenge, which turned the strike into ball four.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed with a walk of his own before McMahon pounced on the first pitch he saw — a 99 mph fastball — and drilled it to left field for the game-tying three-run homer.
“It injected some life into us,” Rice said. “It’s super impressive to be able to go backside like that here as a left-handed hitter, let alone off a great pitcher like [Cease].”
