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There will be a lot of breath going through the end of the regular season as the Yankees look to advance to the playoffs.
But while they’re currently in a close battle with the Blue Jays and Red Sox for the two AL wildcard spots, they at least got a little breather on Friday, when they finally beat a team with ease.
A day after manager Aaron Boone slapped his side for their inability to increase the leads in what turned into a horrific overtime loss, the Yankees scored four runs in the seventh to fend off the Indians in a win of 8-0.
“This is what we have to do when we have the opportunity,” Boone said after the win. “We haven’t had a lot of games where we have scored a few points and we have come away like that.”
The four-point set was capped with a three-point shot from Brett Gardner that made it 6-0 as the Yankees tied a season-high with five homers for the second time in four games.
Afterwards, Gardner – with more playoff experience than anyone in the Yankees – told the team to just focus on each day and “don’t look too far.”
“I feel good about our chances,” Gardner said. “We’re in a position to make the playoffs if we play well enough down the home stretch.
More games like Friday’s would help. The Yankees scored for a 10th straight game, their best streak of the year.
“It was nice to win a game easily,” said Joey Gallo, who has scored twice. “We played really, very close games. … We have a lineup that can do it. We have to do it more.
Coupled with the Blue Jays’ loss to the Twins, the Yankees jumped over Toronto and came back to a wild card spot by half a game with 14 games remaining. They stayed within half a game of the Red Sox, who beat the Orioles, the team that rallied to defeat the Yankees on Thursday.
In just the Yankees’ fourth victory by more than a point since August 24, Corey Kluber gave them six shutouts.
“We have to win every night,” Kluber said.
Kluber hadn’t pitched more than four innings since his draw in Texas on May 19, but he managed to turn back the clock against his former team, Cleveland.
In the second inning, Gallo punched a home run in the second bridge on the right to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead. It was his fourth straight start with a home run, as he seeks to find his rhythm as a Yankee.
In the third, Kluber allowed light-kick catcher Roberto Perez a start single, then pierced light-kick shortstop – and ex-Met – Andres Gimenez with a 0-2 pitch. But he put out the next three batters to keep the one-point lead.
The judge, who entered a 0-for-13 skid, opened the bottom of the fourth with a center-right homerun. It was his 35th explosion of the season – and the fifth of his last seven games.
Kluber again ran into trouble with the bottom of the order in the fifth, marching Perez and yielding a blooping blow to Andres Gimenez – after edging them both, 0-2 – before escaping any damage.
The Yankees turned another double play to get Kluber out of a sixth jam.
He was replaced by Michael King to start the seventh. King pulled the team out in order with the help of DJ LeMahieu, who made a nice load play on Owen Miller’s slow ground for the second out.
King pitched two scoreless innings before the Yankees secured some much-needed confidence in the seventh, with a single RBI from Gio Urshela that made it 3-0.
Gardner followed with his three-run homerun over Nick Wittgren.
“We just didn’t have that swing to separate us and with a swing it calms everyone down,” the judge said of Gardner.
Stanton and Gallo scored back to back in the eighth before Lucas Luetge pitched in the ninth.
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