Giancarlo Stanton is beginning a rehab assignment today, per Lindsey Adler of The Athletic (via Twitter). Before this latest injury, Stanton had been enjoying a run of sound health. For the season, Stanton has appeared in 80 games, slashing .228/.309/.498 with 24 home runs in 328 plate appearances. Stanton even started 38 games in the outfield grass, his most defensive action since 2018. Elsewhere around the Junior Circuit…
Blue Jays southpaw Tim Mayza will begin a rehab assignment in Triple-A today, per Keegan Matheson of MLB.com (via Twitter). Mayza has been a key piece of Toronto’s bullpen for a number of years, no less so this season when he has pitched to a 2.88 ERA/3.94 FIP across 41 appearances totaling 34 1/3 innings. Mayza has been out of action since August 7th. The 30-year-old has held lefties to a .157/.218/.275 line this season.
The Twins are cautiously optimistic that Kenta Maeda might be able to return late in the season to pitch out of the bullpen as he used to for the Dodgers. Maeda is throwing bullpens now, but President of Baseball Ops Derek Falvey was non-commital about Maeda’s ability to make a late-season appearance, per Darren Wolfson of 5 Eyewitness News (via Twitter). Maeda is recovering from Tommy John surgery.
The Yankees announced Tuesday that outfielder/designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton has been placed on the 10-day injured list due to tendonitis in his left Achilles. The move is retroactive to Sunday. Outfielder Tim Locastro is up from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to take Stanton’s spot on the active roster.
Stanton, 32, was named the All-Star Game’s MVP after swatting a game-tying home run off Tony Gonsolin. He’s hitting .228/.309/.498 with 24 long balls on the season but has been an all-or-nothing hitter for the bulk of the summer. Stanton is just 23-for-138 dating back to June 1 (.167), but 13 of those 23 hits on which he’s connected have been home runs. He’s also plated 26 runs in that time, delivering several key hits despite a generally porous overall output at the plate.
With Stanton sidelined for a yet-to-be-determined period of time — the Yankees have not provided a potential timetable for his recovery — the Yankees can turn to hot-hitting Matt Carpenter for an increased role. Locastro, Aaron Hicks and Aaron Judge should see considerable run in the outfield, while struggling Joey Gallo may also see some increased opportunities to get back on track at the plate. At the same time, Stanton’s absence could further hasten the Yanks to pursue another bat that would push Gallo — whom they’re reportedly trying to trade — out of the picture entirely.
The 30-year-old Locastro is one of MLB’s fastest players and has a .256/.336/.414 batting line through 150 Triple-A plate appearances this season. He hit .240/.321/.480 in a tiny sample of 28 trips to the plate with the Yankees earlier this season but is an overall .232/.333/.337 hitter in parts of six Major League seasons.
The Yankees announced a series of moves before tonight’s matchup with the Orioles. Most notably, designated hitter/right fielder Giancarlo Stanton is headed to the 10-day injured list because of a right calf strain. New York also placed reliever Jonathan Loáisiga on the 15-day IL and designated catcher Rob Brantly for assignment. In corresponding moves, the Yankees welcomed Joey Gallo back from the COVID-19 injured list. They also recalled relievers JP Sears and David McKay from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
Stanton has been one of the best hitters for the AL-leading Yankees. He’s mashing at a .285/.339/.523 clip, and his 11 home runs tie him for fifth in MLB. The big slugger has a personal-low 8.3% walk rate, but he’s doing more than enough damage on contact to offset the corresponding drop in his on-base percentage. Stanton has been an instrumental piece of a lineup that has been among the league’s best. Aaron Judge is playing at an MVP-type pace through the season’s first month and a half, with Stanton and Anthony Rizzo also offering middle-of-the-order caliber production.
Unfortunately, Stanton is also no stranger to the injured list. He’s landed on the IL because of leg issues in each of the past four years. Stanton missed a significant chunk of the 2019 campaign because of a right knee sprain, then lost more than half of the shortened 2020 season with a left hamstring strain. The 32-year-old had a more minor IL stint due to a left quad strain last year, and he’ll obviously miss some time with his current malady. A timetable remains unclear, but manager Aaron Boone informed reporters last night (via Joel Sherman of the New York Post) that he was headed for an MRI after leaving yesterday’s game with calf tightness.
The Yankees have been hit hard by injuries in recent days. New York lost pitchers Chad Green and Luis Gil to Tommy John procedures over the weekend. Closer Aroldis Chapman hit the IL with Achilles tendinitis yesterday, and Boone told reporters this afternoon that Loáisiga was going on the IL with shoulder discomfort. The team’s official diagnosis for Loáisiga is shoulder inflammation.
New York welcomes Gallo back to the lineup a few days after he landed on the virus list. The power-hitting outfielder hit the IL on Sunday as part of a trio of Yankees suffering flu-like symptoms, but he and Kyle Higashioka have returned quickly. Gallo is capable of suiting up in either corner outfield spot but is struggling this season, owning just a .176/.294/.333 line through 119 plate appearances.
Brantly was selected onto the 40-man roster once Higashioka went out to offer some catching depth behind Jose Trevino. With Higahioka now back, Brantly loses his roster spot after appearing in one game. The 32-year-old has seen brief action at the big league level in each of the last four years, but he’s not tallied more than 40 MLB plate appearances in a season since 2013. He’ll have the right to refuse an outright assignment in favor of minor league free agency if he passes through waivers unclaimed.
BOSTON — The decision of the day at Fenway Park came when Alex Cora, Red Sox skipper, turned to his lefty reliever Darwinzon Hernandez to go after the Yankees’ Anthony Rizzo, the Yankees down by one, two men on and two outs in the eighth inning.
Giancarlo Stanton, standing on deck, internally broadcast his analysis of the move:
“They better get him out.”
They didn’t. Stanton, apparently the Tony Romo of talking to one self, made Boston pay with, simply enough, his biggest hit as a Yankee and the biggest hit of this Yankees season. The narrative of this guy being a Brian Cashman blunder seems as far away as Stanton’s 452-foot grand slam was from home plate as it sailed onto Lansdowne Street.
Yes, Stanton’s moonshot catapulted the Yankees to a thrilling, 5-3 victory over the Sawx on Saturday evening, pulling the rivals even at 88-67 for the American League’s top wild-card slot. The Yankees’ fifth straight win goes down as their best of the year, the second straight day they could say that.
“It’s a great feeling,” Stanton said. “A lot of emotions going on. I’m just glad I was able to do it, compress everything and be on time for the fastball and something good happened.”
“It was incredible,” Nestor Cortes Jr. said.
Giancarlo Stanton celebrates with Rougned Odor after belting the game-winning grand slam in the Yankees’ 5-3 win over the Red Sox.N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelberg
What a revival for Stanton and his team. What a rebuke to those who thought the behemoth, injured so often the prior two seasons and strikeout-prone always, lacked the temerity and/or the durability to play such a vital role with this club.
“I just think he’s done a great job in not only preparing baseball-wise, carrying out an offensive game plan,” Aaron Boone said, “but I think he’s done a great job of preserving himself physically and making sure he’s able to post as much as he has this year.”
The 31-year-old now has 33 homers and 91 RBIs, joining with Aaron Judge (who made Saturday’s defensive play of the game, robbing Boston’s Bobby Dalbec of a two-run homer with a brilliant, fifth-inning catch) to give the Yankees an elite middle-of-the-lineup duo, the likes of which they haven’t deployed since, arguably, the days of Alex Rodriguez and Gary Sheffield. Seventeen of those blasts and 45 of those RBIs have come just since Aug. 1, so many of them in big spots.
“Just being a little shorter, a little more direct, staying inside the balls better,” Stanton said. “I was making hard contact but staying to the ground, ground-ball singles pretty hard, where now I’m able to get some lift.”
Nothing to date in his Yankees existence, though, has topped the homer and four RBIs he posted on Saturday.
It wasn’t only Stanton who revelled in the possibilities when Hernandez came out of the bullpen.
“You see it coming, right?” Boone said. “When they go to the lefty there, they’re kind of putting their chips in there with getting Rizzo out. We obviously like the matchup with Stanton there if we can get him to the plate.”
Rizzo received a Hernandez pitch to his front knee, loading the bases for Stanton, Hernandez required to keep pitching as per the three-batter rule.
“We were talking about it in the dugout, we had the right guy up,” Cortes said.
Luis Severino, the Yankees’ pitcher of record at that moment, said he was discussing bottom-of-the-eighth strategy with catcher Gary Sanchez when he mentioned, “Stanton’s gonna hit a homer.”
“I’d obviously rather face a lefty than a righty at any time,” Stanton said, and Cora, clearly concerned, ran out to the mound to talk things over with Hernandez. One 94 mph Hernandez fastball later, it was a brand new ballgame and dramatically changed season, with Severino and Aroldis Chapman securing the last six outs.
“We’re now in a better situation than we were [Friday] … so it’s our job to get out of this city in an even better situation tomorrow,” Stanton said, whose voice, lacking heft for much of his time as a Yankee, now carries loud and far, its limits for boldness and perspicacity delightfully unknown to his teammates and fans.
Giancarlo Stanton was the man on this night, no question. He hit a home run against the Orioles, and singled in the winning run in the 11th inning. Had the Yankees lost this game to a team 50 games below .500, it would have been tough for anyone in The Bronx to get more than an hour or two of sleep.
But it was fitting that Aaron Judge was the ghost runner who slid across the plate to make it a 4-3 final. Judge was hardly a ghost on Friday night, or any other night, even though he didn’t get the big hit in the 10th. At an ultra-visible 6-foot-7, 282 pounds, he moved over to center field to clear room for the 6-6, 245-pound Stanton in right. That Twin Tower effect is a remarkable sight in the outfield, and Judge is the one who makes it possible.
“He is a great athlete, one, and he can do it,” manager Aaron Boone said. “And in a lot of ways it’s going home for him, where he played most of his life. Second, it’s the kind of teammate he is. It’s whatever you need, and he loves going over there. He loves doing it … and that’s really valuable.”
Judge in center field in Yankee Stadium is a bit like William “The Refrigerator” Perry in the Bears’ backfield in Super Bowl XX. It’s awfully hard to take your eyes off him.
To see Judge live is to remember that he is five inches taller and 67 pounds heavier than the giant whose presence filled the old ballpark like no other: Babe Ruth. The Bambino is Phil Rizzuto compared to Judge. In fact, when the Yankees outfielder chatted with the 6-2, 195-pound Boone behind the batting cage Friday, the manager looked about the size of a teenage clubhouse kid.
Aaron Judge slides safely into home to score the game-winning run in the Yankees’ 4-3, 11-inning victory over the Orioles.Getty Images
The Yankees will have to pay Judge a ton of money next season, in his final year of arbitration, or in a long-term deal to keep him away from free agency in 2023. They need to keep the 29-year-old outfielder the face of the franchise for the rest of his prime.
Why? You can find players around baseball who look or play like everyone else on the Yankees’ roster, even one or two who match up with Gerrit Cole. Not Judge. There’s no replacing him. If you’re looking for another Judge, you need to walk into an NBA or NFL locker room.
He is athletic enough to play center and to turn a hard single to left into an acrobatic double, the way he did in the sixth inning. The Orioles’ Austin Hays made a good play cutting off the ball and firing a strike to second as Judge hit a second gear and threw himself into a headfirst slide. As Jahmai Jones reached for him with his glove, Judge pulled back his left hand and grabbed the corner of the base with his right, just beating the hard tag to his upper chest.
Judge kicked up a cloud of dust, and ended up on his back as his helmet went flying. He emerged unscathed, and headed back to center for the seventh. He stayed there for the full 11 innings, waiting for another ball to run down, like the shallow fly he ran down in the first.
The big man’s versatility gives Boone so much flexibility to play with. “It’s very impressive, and huge for our best lineup too,” Stanton said. “The fact that he’s so versatile to be able to bounce over to center, I’m sure he can play left if we needed him too as well. It’s huge for us.”
As huge as Judge himself. Take a moment and consider the size of some of the center-field greats who shaped Yankees mythology. Joe DiMaggio was 6-2, 193. Mickey Mantle was 5-11, 195. Bernie Williams was 6-2, 180.
Judge was assigned to play the position that puts a premium on speed and grace for the 18th time this year, while carrying 32 more pounds than the Knicks’ heaviest player, Julius Randle. And he made it look easy.
Of course, Judge has made everything look easy of late. He hit .500 on the Yankees’ road trip. He has reached base safely in 24 of his last 25 games, and is batting .387 with eight homers and 24 RBI in that span.
It’s quite possible baseball has never seen a hitter with this package of size, skill, athleticism, and power, and yet the other night in Anaheim, Calif., Judge said of his recent performance: “I wouldn’t say it’s anything to write home about yet.”
Almost every time Aaron Judge shows up at the ballpark, it’s worth writing home about. Including Friday night, Stanton’s night. Judge is still the Yankees’ ultimate giant in every conceivable way.
ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Yankees envisioned Corey Kluber making important starts and Zack Britton pitching the eighth inning in even more.
But as the Yankees dropped a third straight game Monday night, they saw Kluber implode in the fourth inning and the replacements for Britton give up the go-ahead run in the eighth in an 8-7 loss to the Angels at Angel Stadium.
And with the Rays now the hottest team in the sport — having won eight consecutive games, the Yankees saw their deficit grow to seven games in the AL East.
DJ LeMahieu said this is the time of year when players begin to pay attention to the standings and he remained confident in the Yankees’ chances.
“If we take care of business, we’ll be in a really good spot at the end,’’ LeMahieu said. “It’s a good division.”
“Our goal doesn’t change,’’ Gary Sanchez said through an interpreter. “That’s to win the East, no matter what.”
To do that, the Yankees will have to find out what they have in Kluber down the stretch.
In his return from a shoulder strain that sidelined him since May, the right-hander didn’t allow a hit for the first three innings before he allowed five runs in the fourth.
Corey Kluber struggle in his return to the Yankees on Monday.Getty Images
A back-and-forth game remained tied until the bottom of the eighth, when ex-Met Juan Lagares delivered a two-out RBI single off Clay Holmes for the go-ahead run and the Yankees couldn’t answer in the ninth, as the Angels used seven pitchers in the win.
It was the first time since June 30-July 4 that the Yankees lost three in a row.
Aaron Boone defended the decision to keep Kluber in the game despite three consecutive singles, a lineout to center and a walk before Jack Mayfield crushed a grand slam.
“One mistake really got him,’’ Boone said.
Kluber was encouraged by how he felt and like Boone, regretted just the Mayfield at-bat.
“I made a bad pitch in a big spot,’’ Kluber said. “It’s one pitch wish I could get back.”
The result wasted a resurgent performance from a Yankee offense that had been held down for most of the previous two games in Oakland.
LeMahieu doubled to left to lead off the game and came around on Anthony Rizzo’s opposite-field double to left.
Aaron Judge followed with a sharp single to leave runners on the corners for Giancarlo Stanton, who grounded into a double play.
Gary Sanchez looks on as Jared Walsh 0 and Max Stassi congratulate Jack Mayfield after his grand slam on Monday night.Getty Images
Rizzo scored on the play, but that’s all the Yankees would get off Angels’ opener Mike Mayers.
Given an early 2-0 lead, Kluber retired 10 of the first 11 batters he faced, with just a two-out walk to Phil Gosselin in the first.
But Kluber, barely hitting 90 mph, faltered in the fourth.
The Yankees scored three two-out runs in the fifth to tie the game.
A single by LeMahieu knocked in Brett Gardner. Rizzo singled to center and moved to second on an error by Marsh. Judge delivered an infield hit to make it 5-4 and Stanton followed with a single to center to tie the game.
With runners on the corners, the struggling Joey Gallo struck out.
Andrew Heaney took over for Kluber to start the bottom of the fifth and immediately gave up a towering blast to Shohei Ohtani to put the Angels back in front by a run.
A two-out RBI triple by Lagares gave the Angels another run in the sixth.
Stanton continued his tear at the plate by hitting one into the rocks over the center-field fence, a two-run shot measured at 457 feet that tied it again.
Peralta pitched a scoreless seventh and allowed a leadoff single to Marsh in the eighth. Marsh advanced to third on a pair of groundouts before scoring on Lagares’ RBI single against Holmes.
“We’re playing really good ball,’’ LeMahieu said. “We just came out on the short side of things the last three days.”
The Yankees rolled to their 13th straight win and blasted four homers in an 8-2 victory over the A’s at Oakland Coliseum on Friday night.
They’ve hit 10 homers in their past three games and scored at least five runs in their last eight. It adds up to the franchise’s longest winning streak since 1961, when they also won 13 in a row.
“Any time you push records with this organization, you’re probably doing something special,’’ Gerrit Cole said of the streak. “But there’s a lot left out there for us.”
Their biggest bats — Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge — both went deep and their best pitcher, Cole, pitched like an ace, with six shutout innings.
Chad Green got five huge outs before the Yankees tacked on three runs in the ninth against the A’s, who are going in the opposite direction, losing six in a row.
Luke Voit and Gio Urshela celebrate Voit’s home run during the Yankees’ win Friday night.Getty Images
“This is what we thought we’d do all year,’’ Luke Voit said. “We’re finally getting to that point.”
And because the Rays also refuse to lose, the Yankees remained four back of first-place Tampa Bay in the AL East.
“We know every game is still a must-win,’’ said Kyle Higashioka, who also homered. “It’s going to be hopefully that way until the end of October.’’
And for a change, they pulled away late.
“It was good to see us continue to add on,’’ Aaron Boone said. “It’s something we haven’t done a lot of. We put the team away.”
Stanton gave them the lead with another titanic homer to lead off the top of the fourth. He’s homered in four straight games for the third time in his career.
“Watching ‘Big G’ hit homers is my favorite thing in all of baseball,’’ Higashioka said of Stanton’s prodigious home runs.
Two batters after Stanton’s 472-foot shot, Voit, still in a limited role following the arrival of Anthony Rizzo, hit one out to center to make it 2-0.
Since his return from an IL stint due to left knee inflammation, Voit has looked like the hitter who led the majors in home runs last season.
The Yankees got a three-run homer from Judge in the fifth, his 28th of the season.
It knocked left-hander Sean Manaea out of the game and unlike on Thursday — when the Yankees blew a 6-0 advantage — Cole helped them hold onto this one.
Cole allowed consecutive singles to Elvis Andrus and Tony Kemp to start the bottom of the fifth before Marte popped out. Matt Olson walked to load the bases, but Cole got Jed Lowrie swinging for the second out.
Giancarlo Stanton circles the bases after his massive home run on Friday night.AP
Josh Harrison then hit a liner that seemed destined for left field for a two-run single, but Gio Urshela, in just his second game back from a strained hamstring, made an excellent leaping grab to his left end the threat.
Cole has been superb since his return from the COVID-19 IL. He’s given up just one run in 17 ²/₃ innings in three outings.
Joely Rodriguez replaced Cole to start the seventh and was shaky.
He walked pinch-hitter Chad Pinder with one out and allowed a single to Marte. After a visit from pitching coach Matt Blake, Olson singled to left to score Pinder and a throwing error by Joey Gallo allowed another run to come in.
Chad Green took over for Rodriguez and walked Lowrie, but then got Harrison to ground into an inning-ending double play.
The offense prevented any further drama with three runs in the ninth, with Higashioka hitting his ninth of the season and Judge adding an RBI single.
If those two descriptions don’t always go hand in hand, they sure do when it comes to Giancarlo Stanton and his robust 2021.
Remember when Stanton looked like an intractable, inflexible, untradeable entity, an albatross around the Yankees’ payroll for the foreseeable future? Well, if the 31-year-old has done nothing else this year, he surely has increased his appeal to other clubs. Not only is he clobbering the baseball, bringing a .267/.368/.476 slash line into Tuesday night’s game against the Braves at Truist Park, but he is doing it in bulk, his 104 games and 435 plate appearances easily exceeding the 41 and 166 he totaled in 2019 and 2020 combined. Just in the last month, moreover, he returned to the outfield after not having played there since September 2019; Tuesday night marked his 12th outfield start over a span of 25 games.
To boot, Stanton has done something else this season: Combine his success, relative good health and improved versatility with what has transpired elsewhere around the Yankees’ roster, and it becomes harder to envision an offseason Stanton trade — one that would occur only with his blessing, thanks to his no-trade protection, to be clear — as solely an escape. The departure of the $159 million due him through 2027, (and probably no team would assume the entire bill) would bring some pain in addition to salary relief.
“When he’s going good, he’s obviously a guy that changes the game all the time,” Aaron Boone said of Stanton on Tuesday. “So [we] just want to continue to make sure he’s in that good place as much as we can all help him do that, and we’ve seen him in stretches — obviously we saw him in the playoffs, everyone kind of hopped on his back and he led us through all that. Just want to make sure he continues to remain in a good place and we continue to get those good results.”
Giancarlo StantonCharles Wenzelberg/New York Post
Now, let’s call a timeout to ensure we don’t forget the elephant in the room: Even this season, generally healthy (he missed 14 days with a left quad injury in May) and bringing a 131 OPS+ to work Tuesday as he had reached base in 20 straight games, Stanton is mad streaky. He put up a ghastly .214/.320/.333 slash line in 23 July games, and had another half-month (from his May 28 return from the injured list through June 15) with a .186/.286/.419 line. This comes with the territory for a 6-foot-6 guy with funky mechanics.
“One of the reasons he’s able to hit the ball as hard as he is is because as big and as strong and his levers and if he gets it all working properly, those are big-time assets,” Boone said. “But it’s also why you’ve seen people over the years that sometimes can be more difficult for larger people to be really consistent. Because there are more moving parts to get into [a] strong position. So that’s, I’m sure, something that guys who are bigger have to constantly deal with. Advantages, there [are] plenty, but there [are] also challenges.”
The Yankees’ most perfect everyday player of 2021 is probably Aaron Judge … and he can be a free agent after next year, as can his fellow outfielder, new arrival Joey Gallo. Brett Gardner appears likely to retire after the season, and young guys Miguel Andujar and Clint Frazier have registered disastrous campaigns. On the designated hitter front, meanwhile, Luke Voit has reminded us this year just how dangerous he can be … and just how injury-prone, too.
Maybe by season’s end, the variables will have changed dramatically once again. To even be having this discussion in late August, however, ranks as an upset. Who figured Stanton would be this good, this upright (props to Yankees director of player health and performance Eric Cressey for keeping both Stanton and Judge active), this vital? It’s a heck of a development amidst a dizzying pinstriped season.
Giancarlo Stanton has been playing semi-regularly in the outfield for nearly four weeks, so it certainly was not a surprise to see him manning right field when the Yankees began an interleague series Monday night in Atlanta.
Starting for the 11th time in the Yankees’ past 23 games in the outfield, Stanton also continued his offensive surge through that stretch, blasting another homer and driving in three runs in the sizzling Yankees’ 10th straight win, 5-1 over the Braves at Truist Park.
“I think [playing defense] has helped kind of just not focusing on hitting,” Stanton said after the game. “You always want to be your best in the box, and feel like you’re in the best mind frame. But that also means turning it off for a second and using that focus somewhere else. … So yeah, it helps in some way.”
The 31-year-old Stanton didn’t play in the field at all last season nor in any of his first 100 appearances this year until starting in left field July 30 in Miami, where he was a four-time All-Star outfielder during his first eight big league seasons.
Giancarlo Stanton gets congratulated after a two-RBI double against the Braves on Monday.EPA
Stanton’s usage in the outfield in recent weeks also largely has cleared the designated hitter spot for Luke Voit, helping to alleviate a logjam at first base and the corner-outfield spots after the trade deadline acquisitions of outfielder Joey Gallo and first baseman Anthony Rizzo.
“I think if anything, physically it’s helped him, moving around and keeping his body going,” said Aaron Boone. “It’s been a seamless transition right back out there. Looks like he’s been playing regularly all year, the last couple of years.
“As soon as we started doing it, you always know there’s gonna be a conclusion drawn. It’s because he’s in the outfield, he’s doing this or isn’t doing that. Sometimes it’s just baseball, and the ebb and flow of the season. … That said, it’s very possible that being out there has helped him a little bit.”
Voit was named the American League Player of the Week earlier Monday, but he was not in the lineup with the DH spot eliminated in National League parks.
Stanton perhaps got a head start on this week’s award with a solo shot against Braves starter Huascar Ynoa leading off Monday’s second inning, driving a 2-2 slider away over the wall in right for his 21st of the season.
Stanton later snapped a 1-1 tie in the sixth, with a blistering two-run double to left at 119.2 mph before Boone double-switched him out of the game in the bottom half. Over his last 23 games since his initial return to the outfield, Stanton is batting .316 with five homers, 13 walks and 18 RBIs.
“He’s a unicorn, he does things every night that are a little bit different than anyone else,” Boone said. “Every time he hits one, I think everyone gets a kick out of going to the [score] board [to see] how hard he hits it.”
To that end, Stanton said his teammates usually joke with him “is that all you got?” When Boone’s “unicorn” comment was relayed, Stanton added, “That’s pretty cool. He’s seen a lot of baseball, so it’s cool if I can do something that guys out there every day for years are seeing something new.”
The Yankees continued their stunning turnaround by beating the Braves, a team that was as hot as they were heading into Monday’s game at Truist Park.
Sparked by another strong game from Giancarlo Stanton, who had a solo homer and a two-run double, the Yankees won their season-high 10th straight, with a 5-1 victory.
It’s their longest winning streak since last September and came in the first game between two teams entering with winning streaks of at least nine games since 1901.
With the win, the Yankees pulled to within four games of the first-place Rays in the AL East and began a nine-game road trip with another solid performance from their pitching staff.
Jordan Montgomery allowed just one run despite walking four in five innings. Jonathan Loaisiga and Wandy Peralta pitched three scoreless innings before Aroldis Chapman pitched the ninth in his first appearance since he was unable to close out a win over Boston on Wednesday.
Giancarlo Stanton celebrates his second inning home run.AP
Chapman returned to form with a perfect inning.
It all came against an Atlanta team that, like the Yankees, had won nine in a row and 16 of 18. The Braves were also 10-0 in their previous 10 games against lefty starters.
Stanton gave the Yankees the lead in the top of the second with a homer to right, his 21st of the season, off right-hander Huascar Ynoa.
Dansby Swanson tied it to open the bottom of the inning with a home run to center off Montgomery, who got some help from Joey Gallo in left later in the second, when Gallo made a diving catch near the line to rob Guillermo Heredia of a potential double with one out.
Montgomery got into trouble in the fourth, with back-to-back two-out walks to Adam Duvall and William Contreras.
Following a visit from pitching coach Matt Blake, Montgomery gave up a liner to Heredia, which went right at Andrew Velazquez at short for the final out of the inning.
Velazquez had a two-out double to right in the fifth. Ynoa fell behind Montgomery, 3-1, before Montgomery went down swinging on a 3-2 pitch.
But it hardly mattered, with Stanton in the lineup.
After Ynoa hit DJ LeMahieu with a pitch to lead off the sixth, Anthony Rizzo lined out to center and Aaron Judge flied to right.
Gallo walked to extend the inning and bring up Stanton, who delivered again — this time by ripping a double to left that scored both runners to make it 3-1.
The Yankees then quickly turned to their bullpen, as Loaisiga replaced Montgomery — taking Stanton’s spot in the lineup in the double-switch, with Brett Gardner also entering the game.
Loaisiga struck out four in two spotless innings before Luke Voit pinch hit for him in the eighth after Judge singled and Gallo walked again. A balk by Edgar Santana advanced both runners before Voit walked to load the bases for Gary Sanchez, who ripped a two-run single through the left side of the infield against Jesse Chavez for a 5-1 lead.
