SEATTLE — Probably the most urgent merchandise on the Yankees’ calendar final October was an organizational deep dive.
This 12 months, they will formally clear their schedules for playoff baseball.
There are greater and higher objectives on their agenda, however the Yankees took care of the primary order of enterprise on Wednesday night time by clinching a postseason berth with a 2-1, 10-inning win over the Mariners at T-Cell Park.
The champagne celebration was quickly delayed after Clay Holmes gave up a game-tying house run to Justin Turner within the eighth inning.
However Anthony Rizzo, who had two of the Yankees’ three hits and drove in each of their runs on the night time, led off the tenth by ripping a double to proper discipline to attain computerized runner Jasson Dominguez from second base.
Ian Hamilton then closed it out within the backside of the inning with some assist from a weird double play.
Cal Raleigh had led off with a single to place runners on the corners earlier than Hamilton obtained Randy Arozarena to strike out.
However as he did, Arozarena’s bat went flying down the third-base line, with Julio Rodriguez dancing out of the best way to keep away from it.
That allowed Austin Wells an opportunity to throw down to 3rd, the place he picked off Rodriguez for the second out.
Hamilton then struck out Turner to finish it.
After getting not noted of final 12 months’s dance following a depressing 82-80 season, the Yankees (89-63) deliberate on celebrating Wednesday’s accomplishment after which turning their consideration to the division.
With their ninth win within the final 12 video games, they opened up their AL East lead over the Orioles to a season-high 5 video games on Wednesday night time with 10 video games to play, trimming their magic quantity to clinch the division to 6 video games.
“Anytime you get in, I feel it’s essential to understand that,” supervisor Aaron Boone stated earlier than the sport. “The season is a gauntlet, it’s lengthy, it’s a grind. Final 12 months we didn’t make the playoffs, so possibly that even offers you a heightened, extra appreciation for a chance to get into the dance. Hopefully we get there. We’ll respect each step that hopefully we proceed to take.”
The Yankees have gotten right here thanks largely to the famous person tandem of Aaron Decide and Juan Soto, who’ve gone backwards and forwards of their historic feats all season.
However they’ve additionally discovered alternative ways to win typically sufficient, like they did on Wednesday night time.
Nestor Cortes continued a robust stretch by tossing six scoreless innings, which seemed prefer it is likely to be sufficient to have Rizzo’s RBI single within the second inning maintain up.
However Holmes hung a slider down the center with one out within the eighth inning and Turner didn’t miss it, crushing a solo house run contained in the left-field foul pole to tie the sport 1-1.
It marked Holmes’ thirteenth blown save of the season, extending his main league lead.
Two weeks faraway from shedding his job because the outright nearer, Holmes had entered within the seventh inning with two outs and the tying run on second base.
He walked Rodriguez — harm by a pair of questionable calls from house plate umpire Jim Wolf — however held on by getting Raleigh to fly out to finish the menace.
Holmes then struck out Arozarena for the primary out of the eighth inning earlier than Turner made his mark.
Boone then introduced in Luke Weaver, who struck out 4 throughout 1 ²/₃ innings to ship the sport to extras.
Cortes, who’s making an attempt to make his case for a spot within the playoff rotation, has now pitched to a 1.58 ERA over his final six outings — one among which was an extended reduction outing because the Yankees put him within the bullpen one flip by way of the rotation.
The Yankees took a 1-0 lead within the second inning due to Dominguez making issues occur.
The middle fielder walked, stole second and took third on catcher Raleigh’s errant throw, setting him as much as rating on Rizzo’s line-drive single to proper discipline.
