The Yankees have spent much of this season proving they can erase deficits. They’ve already piled up 23 comeback wins, and that trait has started to matter again after a rough stretch in mid-June and earlier this month left them searching for the kind of fight they seemed to lose.
That missing edge showed up in the Rays series, when Tampa struck first on Wednesday and New York never really answered, getting shut out 3-0. But against the Nationals over the weekend, the Yankees finally looked like a team that still expects to land the last punch.
Friday night set the tone. With one out already in the ninth, Jazz Chisholm Jr., who called himself and his team out this week, delivered one of the biggest swings of the year.
Matt Krook, the former Yankee farmhand, left a sweeper over the middle, and Chisholm drove it into the seats to put New York ahead. He followed it with one of the bat flips that Chisholm does best.
Game two brought a different kind of rescue, but the same result. The Yankees trailed 2-0 and had gone 0-8 with runners in scoring position before Ryan McMahon finally got them on the board with a homer.
Then, with Josè Caballero aboard, Trent Grisham - one of the most clutch bats on the team - sent one to the same spot Chisholm had reached the night before. That blast gave the Yankees the lead for good, and Paul Goldschmidt added another homer in the inning for good measure.
The weekend’s most telling moment may have come earlier, in the third inning of game four against the Rays. It didn’t have the late drama of the Nationals series, but it showed the same stubbornness. Down 1-0 and coming off a night when the offense had done almost nothing, McMahon stepped into a long battle with Drew Rasmussen, one of the best pitchers in the league and a guy who has owned the Yankees in his career.
McMahon worked Rasmussen for 12 pitches, fouling off seven of them before finally lacing a double down the line to tie the game. From there, New York rolled to a 12-4 win.
If the Yankees are going to claw their way back into the American League East, this is the kind of baseball they need more often. The summer swoon was built on quiet bats and a team that looked too easy to bury. This weekend offered a different version: down, but not done.
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