NEW YORK -- The New York Yankees have their chance and, so far, they are seizing it.
They began this season with the best back end of the bullpen in baseball and a lineup stocked with proven table setters and feared power hitters, yet the Yankees somehow have underperformed. Part of it was that the starting rotation took a long time to find its groove. Part of it was a highly ineffective group of middle relievers. But the biggest part was an offense that confounded with its struggles to score.
Everything, though, is clicking now, from hitting to starting pitching to closing out wins. The Yankees have connected with the sweet spot of their season. And just like when ball and bat connect on the sweet spot, things could really take off.
New York beat the Los Angeles Angels 12-6 on Wednesday night before 31,557 at Yankee Stadium for its third straight victory. The Yankees rallied from a pair of deficits and overtook L.A. with four runs apiece in the sixth and seventh innings. Chris Parmelee got his first start at first base and hit two home runs, and Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran each added a homer. It was the third consecutive night with a home run for Beltran, who now has 16 for the season.
“Right now, we are putting good at-bats, we’re making the right play, making the right pitch, we’re making the right move,” Beltran said. “I just have to continue to enjoy the ride, enjoy the moment. In baseball, you have good moments and bad moments. Right now we’re in the good moment so [we] have to get the most out of it.”
This moment, the one the Yanks seem to be grabbing with both hands, is where they can turn the season around and get back into contention. They are just 29-30, but Thursday’s series finale against the Angels starts a stretch where the Yanks could feast, as 18 of their next 25 games are against teams currently under .500. Three of the others are against the 30-29 Tigers.
“I believe in what I am seeing right now, so I believe we can keep doing that,” Beltran said. “We just need to continue to grind, man. We have 103 games left? We have a lot of baseball left, so we need to try to get the most out of the moment, [how] we’re playing right now.”
Yankees manager Joe Girardi offered his take.
“You have to play yourself into contention and," Girardi said, "this is a really important month, because you can’t just keep saying ‘next month’ because you run out of months. I think this is a real important month for us and as we move forward to get back into contention, to climb up in the division and make up some ground.”
The first five in the batting order -- Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, Beltran, Alex Rodriguez and Brian McCann -- were an aggregate 11-for-22 with nine RBIs on Wednesday night. Ellsbury and Gardner scored three runs each. Gardner and Beltran had three hits apiece. A-Rod had two hits. McCann drove in two runs.
The offense that was having trouble scoring runs for so long is now averaging six per game over the past seven games.
“When they're all hitting the way they're capable of, we're going to score runs,” Girardi said. “We've just gone through some really hard times, and it seems like they're figuring it out.”
As McCann added, “Baseball’s a long season, and obviously we didn’t get off to the start we wanted, but that’s the beautiful thing about baseball: It’s six months. Whoever plays the best for six months is going to win, so we still have a lot of baseball lot be played.
"And I like where everybody’s at.”
Finally.
In the time since May 1, the Yankees have been eight games below .500 at one point and eight games out of first place at another. There actually were whispers among baseball officials that the Yanks might be breaking from tradition and selling before the trading deadline. How they perform in the next four weeks -- whether they continue to seize the moment -- will inform if that’s something they would actually do.
But for now they are seizing it; they are clicking. And then New York could, as usual, end up a buyer at the deadline.
