NEW YORK _ Another starting pitcher will inevitably be delivered to 161st Street and River Avenue, sometime before the July 31 trade deadline.
But for now, the Yankees rotation is at least whole again.
Just off the injured list, Domingo German might have wanted a do-over on his first pitch of the game _ bashed for a home run by Jeff McNeil.
From there, the right-handed German cruised through six innings and reminded everyone at Citi Field just how important he'd been to their first-half run.
"We feel like he's sound and ready to go," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of German before Wednesday night's sharp performance in a 5-1 victory against the Mets.
So, this year's Subway Series is in the books, with each club earning a home-and-home split of the four games.
And German (10-2) picked up where he left off earlier this year, delivering six innings and striking out six without issuing a walk.
He gave up just the one run _ a first-pitch ambush by McNeill _ on five hits and restored the AL East-leading Yankees' momentum as they head to Tampa Bay for a four-game holiday weekend series against the second-place Rays.
"They're important games," Boone said. "Against a divisional opponent, especially the team that's closest to us in the standings, I mean those essentially take on double importance in a lot of ways."
One day after their MLB-record streak of consecutive games with a home run ended at 31, the Yankees received back-to-back solo homers by Didi Gregorius and Gio Urshela to open a 4-1 lead in the sixth.
Gleyber Torres had two RBI singles _ one in the first inning and one in the seventh _ while DJ LeMahieu and Aaron Judge (RBI) opened the game with doubles off lefty starter Jason Vargas.
Just named the AL's Player of the Month for June, LeMahieu's string of six straight multi-hit games had ended with Tuesday's 0 for 4.
So, he started another streak on Wednesday with two doubles.
The added victory for the Yankees (55-29) against the Mets (39-48) on Wednesday was seeing the life on German's arsenal during an efficient, 80-pitch performance before 43,323 fans.
German hadn't appeared in a big league game since June 7 at Cleveland, when the discomfort in his left side became too much to manage.
Until that point, German hadn't notified the club of the problems he'd been experiencing since a May 26 start at Kansas City.
By that date, German with a 9-1 record and 2.60 ERA _ had been the biggest revelation on a staff that still hasn't seen ace Luis Severino (shoulder/lat) pitch an inning this year.
German was finally diagnosed with a strained hip flexor, though Boone said "it's tough to say" how much the condition impacted his three starts prior to going on the IL.
Over that span, German had yielded 14 earned runs in 14.2 innings on 21 hits _ seven of them home runs.
"Was it partly because he was feeling a little something in there? I don't know. It didn't seem like the symptoms were necessarily there throughout the whole time," Boone said.
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