The Yankees lineup finally opened well.
And closed well.
And after months of looking ill, it sure seems to look well all of a sudden.
The Yankees ended a first-inning drought, poured it on in the late innings and exploded once again for what has become a rarity: a going-away victory over the Astros that ended 9-3 in front of 40,269 in The Bronx on Wednesday.
With a seventh win in nine games, the Yankees (75-57) remained 3 ½ games back of the Rays and gained a game on the Red Sox, who now are 2 ½ games back of the top wild-card spot.
The Yankees did so with a series of pitchers stepping up: Elmer Rodríguez (six innings, three runs) with the best start of his career, and a gutsy and excellent Paul Blackburn, an at-least intriguing Michael Fulmer and a solid Tim Hill excelling behind him.
They did so with a hitting attack that Aaron Boone has been awaiting for months. Once Aaron Judge went down and the rest of the lineup seemed down, the manager would glance at his batting order and reiterate that there were “a lot of good hitters on there.”
And yet those hitters consistently did not perform: In a 57-game span from June 18 through Saturday, the Yankees scored seven or more runs in just five games.
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To run past Houston, a healthier (but not yet healthy) lineup scored at least seven runs in a third straight game.
The lefties woke up: a maybe-no-longer slumping Jazz Chisholm Jr. tallied three hits; Cody Bellinger drilled a go-ahead, two-run double; Spencer Jones added an RBI single in a four-run seventh inning; and Luis García Jr. remained hot with a two-run shot in the eighth.
But nearly everyone contributed on an evening all Yankees starters except George Lombard Jr. (who did have an RBI groundout) recorded a hit.
“It has been nice to see them start to really gain some traction,” Boone said after a 13-hit outburst that began immediately.
Finally, they scored a run (and finished with two) in the first inning for the first time in 23 games — a span in which Yankees hitters went 7-for-73 (.096) with nine walks and 25 strikeouts in the opening inning, of course with zero runs scored.
Until Wednesday, when Ben Rice smacked a solo shot and the Yankees used some ingenuity to score again. With García on first, Bellinger poked a ground ball to Christian Walker at first, who tried for a double play but hit García — who was running on the grass — in the back. The runners wound up on second and third, and García then scored on Lombard’s groundout.
The Astros scored once in the top of the first and scored a single run again in the fourth and seventh. Each time, the Yankees had an answer in the bottom of the inning.
The loudest answer arrived in the seventh with lefty Bennett Sousa on the mound.
the Astros. Robert Sabo for New York Post
Left-on-left, Trent Grisham — who had misplayed a ball in the first inning — atoned with a blooped single to left. Left-on-left, Rice (who reached in four of five plate appearances) went from behind 1-2 to an eight-pitch walk. Left-on-left, García hit a chopper to the right side and showed just enough wheels, beating Sousa to the base to load the bases.
And, left-on-left, Bellinger — who has been back from the IL for three games and helped the team score 24 runs — cracked a two-run double off the wall in right-center to put the Yankees ahead to stay.
After a Lombard strikeout, Jones, left-on-left, stroked a single to right before Chisholm banked another double off the wall in left to make it 7-3.
No one has personified the struggles of the lineup like Chisholm, who has acknowledged that he has “sucked” and owned a .680 OPS as recently as Friday.
That number is up to .708 after he reached base in four of five plate appearances and has eight hits in his past three games.
“It’s probably the best few games he’s strung together,” Boone said of his second baseman. “So, hopefully, that’s where he’s headed.”
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Chisholm believes he is headed in the right direction. For the first time in a long time, the team’s hitting seems as if it is, too.
“I really want to win a World Series,” Chisholm said. “I’m just trying to get ready and do my best to get us there.”
