The box score will remember Ryan McMahon and Trent Grisham for carrying the Yankees past the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday night. Their two-run singles in the seventh inning flipped a one-run game into a 4-1 win at Yankee Stadium, and they were the ones credited with all four RBIs.
But the rally really began with Luis Garcia Jr.
Garcia opened the seventh with a double off the right-field wall against Michael Rucker, his second double of the night, and the Yankees finally had something to work with after six innings of frustration. They had gone 0-for- with runners in scoring position before that point, and they were still stuck behind Randy Arozarena’s home run off Ryan Weathers.
Garcia’s hit changed the feel of the inning immediately. Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed with a single to move Garcia to third and give New York its first hit with a runner in scoring position all night.
Chisholm then stole second, Spencer Jones walked to load the bases, and McMahon and Grisham cashed it in.
Garcia never drove in a run in the game. He didn’t need to. He was the spark.
That’s the kind of impact the Yankees had in mind when they paid a steep deadline price to get him from the Washington Nationals on Aug. 2.
New York sent four right-handed pitchers to Washington: relievers Yovanny Cruz and Jake Bird, both with big-league time, plus prospects Jack Cebert and Ben Grable. Cebert was ranked as the Yankees’ No. 14 prospect by MLB Pipeline.
The Yankees brought Garcia in after a breakout stretch in Washington. At the time of the trade, he was hitting .283 with 23 home runs, a .560 slugging percentage and an .873 OPS in 104 games. His slugging percentage led the National League when the deal went down.
There was also a strange bit of deadline history attached to him. According to Jayson Stark of The Athletic, Garcia became the first player ever dealt in midseason while leading his league in slugging. The move came in the same deadline neighborhood as the Philadelphia Phillies landing NL batting leader Luis Arraez, giving both East division contenders a league leader to lean on.
The Yankees were chasing offense because they needed it. Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger have all missed time, and the lineup entered Tuesday with the Majors-worst mark since the All-Star break. Garcia, a left-handed bat, gave Aaron Boone a real middle-of-the-order option and a much-needed answer against right-handed pitching.
Boone made no secret of what he thought of the addition.
“He rakes,” Boone said. “He can really hit.”
He added another layer to that evaluation, pointing to Garcia’s growth and his success in platoon matchups.
“He’s been a hitter who has really come of age this year,” Boone said. “One of the best left-vs-right hitters in the National League.”
So far, the early returns have matched the hype. Garcia is 6-for-23 with a home run and one strikeout in six games since arriving in New York. That lone strikeout matters for a lineup that has spent too much of the summer chasing pitches and missing them.
His role makes sense, too. Garcia projects as a first baseman and designated hitter for now, and he’ll likely share time with Paul Goldschmidt against certain matchups until Stanton returns. The fit is about giving Boone another bat that can punish right-handed pitching.
Tuesday night offered the first real glimpse of why the Yankees were so aggressive. Garcia didn’t show up in the RBI column, but his hard contact - 111 mph and 106 mph on the two doubles - set the table for the inning that won the game. Even his outs were hit hard, which is exactly the kind of contact New York has been short on.
The win moved the Yankees to 67-52. They’re still second in the AL East, six games behind the Tampa Bay Rays, and they hold a comfortable lead in the AL wild-card race while trying to stay ahead of the surging Boston Red Sox.
The series continues Wednesday night, and Garcia will be back in the lineup. He’s still settling in, but nights like this are the reason the Yankees went out and got him.
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Yankees Frustration With Trent Grisham Just Spilled Into Plain View
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That unease spilled into the open during a recent game, when a defensive misplay set off visible frustration from a Yankees pitcher on the mound. It was the kind of moment that tends to linger beyond one inning, because for a team with postseason expectations, shaky communication and uneven play in center can quickly become more than just a passing annoyance. [Read more 🡒]