CLEVELAND — Funny how just four swings can change the look of the Yankees’ offense.
Coming into Progressive Field for this four-game series, the Yankees weren’t “banging” home runs. They looked lifeless at the plate and were booed out of Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. Two days later Giancarlo Stanton hammered two home runs and Aaron Hicks and Rougned Odor had one each Friday night to power the Yankees to a 5-3 win over Cleveland.
It was only the third time this season the Yankees (8-11) won back-to-back games and just the second time this year they came back from a deficit of three runs or more. The first time was on Thursday night. The Yankees won three of their last four, but also lost six of their last nine.
It was also their first game this season with more than two homers in a game.
After the Yankees fell into a 3-0 hole in the first, Hicks hit his second homer of the season with one out in the second. Odor hit a two-out, two-run shot to tie the game in that inning.
Stanton led off the third crushing a 91-mph fastball Cleveland lefty Logan Allen put belt high for a 429-foot shot to left field. The ball left the bat at 118 mph. In the fifth, he hammered a 98-mph fastball from right-handed reliever Trevor Stephan. This was just 115.7 mph off the bat and went 418 feet. He became the first hitter in the StatCast era to hit multiple home runs with an exit velocity of 115 mph or more in the same game.
No matter the speed, Stanton had not hit multiple home runs in a season since September 27, 2018. The homers to left field in the third inning and right in the fifth were his fourth and fifth of the season. Stanton, who was 3 for 35 before that first homer, had been swinging at balls out of the strike zone. He had 15 strikeouts in that span.
“I talked to him the other day about ‘You got to still go up and hunt your pitch and your area, and don’t let the pitcher dictate what you’re going to do,” Yankees hitting coach Marcus Thames said before the game of Stanton’s slide. “You come up with your game plan and you have to execute it and don’t get off of it.’ So I just think he’s got to get back into the strike zone and be committed. Take swings with conviction and I think when you do that, that gets him on point.”
But Stanton wasn’t the only Yankee chasing hits as their losses piled up and the offense that was built to out-slug their opponents and overcome their defensive deficiencies, continued to fizzle. The Yankees went into Friday night’s game ranked last in baseball in slugging and a middling 21st in home runs.
Before the game, Thames diagnosed the offense as pressing.
“They’re chasing hits like I think they’re trying to get three hits in one or hit a three run home when nobody is on base at times ,” Thames said. “That just comes with, being an athlete trying to pick your teammates up but doing it the wrong way.
“So I just think mentally we just got to get back to one pitch at a time, one at-bat at a time and all that will come. I see these guys every day. I know how hard they work. We’re in a funk but we’re coming out of it, and we just got to continue to build off one game at a time. I think the power will come when it comes.”
Montgomery certainly gave the Yankees time.
After a 37-pitch first inning that saw the Yankees get reliever Nick Nelson up, Montgomery retired 12 of the last 14 hitters, getting through 3 2/3 more innings. Montgomery allowed three runs, two earned on four hits. He walked three and struck out five. He left in the fifth after giving up a double to Jonathan Lupow and a single to Jose Ramirez. Lucas Luetge dropped a nasty curveball on a 1-2 count against Franmill Reyes to get out of that inning. He gave the Yankees 1 1/3 scoreless innings.
