The Urgency To Turn The Yankee Season Around

    I will go out on a limb here and say, "The Yankees will rebound and start playing a better brand of baseball from today, as they will try to put a bad stretch of baseball behind him them." 

  It is no doubt, the Yankees don't need to be reminded that they desperately need to find a way to get hot again. At this point, according to Yankees' beat reporter Bryan Hoch, "If they are to play like the team that they expected to be, this appears to be their make-or-break week."

  After a recent stretch of bad baseball, last night was a much needed comeback win as Gary Sánchez, Chris Gittens (1st career HR and first big league hit) and Brett Gardner all homered as the Yankees rallied to overcome an early deficit, then Clint Frazier came off the bench to deliver a go-ahead RBI double in a 6-5 victory over the Blue Jays on Tuesday evening at Sahlen Field in Buffalo, N.Y. It looked like the team found their magic swings back in order and the pitching was restored back to its dominating form. 

  The comeback win just added to Brian Cashman's confidence builder for manager Aaron Boone and his coaching staff, the Bombers’ bats came to life, as the team snapped a 3-game losing streak against their A.L. East rivals in the Toronto Blue Jays. Aaron Boone and the Yankee offense backed up   a middling Jordan Montgomery start by finally producing some electric at-bats.  Sánchez, "released the kraken", as he slugged a second-inning homer and then the Yankees’ dugout erupted to celebrate Gittens’ fourth-inning homer, which landed near the Interstate 190 on-ramp and was also his first hit in the Majors.

  Boy, Gittens and Sanchez certainly those shots, as Aaron Boone said it best when he told the press, "We’ve got a lot of runway in front of us to establish an identity and rewrite the story....We’ve dug ourselves a little hole, certainly. But we’re also in control of that story..." The Yankee manager also added that,"...The bottom line is, it doesn’t really matter right now what I say about it. Talk is cheap -- we’ve got to go out and play good baseball....”

  This is a team that has potential, when they put the ball in play, but need to do it it on a consistent basis. Will last night's win carry over into a much needed power surge that will put the Yankees back on track to winning series after series and game after game, like they were doing not to long ago to rebound after a slow start to the 2021 baseball season?

  It is clear that this is a team that has good offense that has to find a way to click on a consistent basis again, as Miguel Andujar knocked a sixth-inning RBI groundout to complete the Yanks’ scoring off Hyun Jin Ryu, who tossed away three runs in six innings. In the seventh, Brett Gardner put his bat on the ball and hammered the baseball to cut the deficit to one run by smashing an Anthony Castro slider over the right-field wall. DJ LeMahieu doubled and scored the tying run after two wild pitches.

  Sanchez said it best when said this through an interpreter:

  "Every victory is important...With this victory, something we want to do is be more consistent winning series. It’s highly important for us. I see this team turning the page and moving forward; I see the offense is picking up at the right time.”   

  The Yankee club and the Yankee fans can only hope that those words will ring true as the team still has a lot of baseball left to play yet.

  Frazier, who was left out of the starting lineup in favor of Gardner against the left-hander Ryu, Frazier snapped a 3-for-22 funk by drilling the go-ahead hit off Jordan Romano in the eighth, scoring pinch-runner Tyler Wade from second base.

  According to Frazier, "In that situation, I was really trying to be disciplined and hit a fastball....He started me off with a slider and Tyler stole [second base]. Once he got to second base, it did change things up a little bit. I would say for the most part, I was trying to hit the ball up the middle. I was a bit early on that fastball and I was just glad to keep it inside the base....”

  Jonathan Loaisiga put together a scoreless seventh for the win. Zack Britton had the Yankees sitting on the edge of their seats in their home half of the eighth, which loaded the bases on two walks and a single, but he recovered to get Bo Bichette on a fly-out before Aroldis Chapman pitched a clean ninth inning for his 13th save.

  Going forward, this team needs to put the pedal to the medal and actually keep grinding out each inning that they play in for the rest of 2021.