SAN DIEGO — On Saturday night at Petco Park, the Yankees put runners everywhere. It drew seven walks and loaded the bases in three separate innings.
It scored all five of its runs against San Diego without a single home run leaving the yard. Three of the players who walked came around to score.
That is not how this lineup has typically operated. The Yankees have leaned on slug all year, waiting for a big fly to bail out a quiet night. This time the offense grinded, controlled the strike zone and forced the Padres to make plays. It is the kind of patient, traffic-heavy attack that tends to travel well into a postseason series.
With a 5-1 win, the Yankees improved to 81-61. They stayed four games behind the AL East-leading Tampa Bay Rays and held a 3 1/2-game cushion over the Boston Red Sox for the American League’s top wild-card spot.
A rookie’s double lights the fuse
The rally that decided the game started with a hometown kid. Spencer Jones grew up in Carlsbad, a short drive up the coast, and once won a home run derby on this very field as a high schooler at La Costa Canyon. On Saturday he delivered the swing that cracked the game open.
With two outs in the second inning, Jones lined a double into the right-field corner off left-hander Robbie Ray. Ben Rice, who had singled to lead off the frame and moved up on George Lombard Jr.’s grounder, trotted home for the game’s first run. The floodgates opened from there.
Ray lost the zone completely. He walked Jose Caballero, Austin Wells and Paul Goldschmidt in succession, the last free pass forcing in a run. Then Cody Bellinger, the Yankees’ most reliable left-on-left bat, punched a two-run single to make it 4-0. Ray needed 42 pitches to escape the inning, and the Yankees never trailed.
Rice was not done. He led off the third with a walk, took off on a hit-and-run as Heliot Ramos singled, and scored on Lombard’s sacrifice fly for a 5-0 lead. All five runs were on the board before the game was half over, and none came on a homer.
The traffic jam nobody else is charting
Here is the wrinkle buried inside a comfortable win, and it is one worth watching. The Yankees created chance after chance and stopped cashing them in. After the fifth run scored in the third, New York did not plate another runner the rest of the night. It stranded 12 men on base.
The missed opportunities piled up. The Yankees loaded the bases with one out later in the third, only for Wells to line into a double play. They put the first two men on in the fifth and stranded both. They loaded the bases again in the sixth, and pinch-hitter Luis Garcia Jr. struck out to end it. In the seventh, two runners reached and never moved past scoring position.
It did not matter on Saturday. It can matter in October. Against a good bullpen, a four-run lead that should have been eight leaves the door cracked. The Yankees went 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position as a team, according to the game’s official box score. The traffic was encouraging. The conversion rate was not, and the Yankees know it.
Boone reaches for a San Diego legend
The most quotable moment came in the visiting clubhouse, and it landed in the perfect city. Ben Rice reached base in all five plate appearances, going 3-for-3 with two walks, and has been the engine of the Yankees’ offense for weeks. Watching him spray line drives around Petco Park, manager Aaron Boone reached for a name enshrined in bronze just outside the ballpark.
“I told him, he’s doing his Tony Gwynn imitation,” Boone said. “Watching him slash it all over the field, man, he keeps hitting it off the barrel, line to line, it feels like.”
Rice kept the praise on his teammate instead. Jones has taken over center field on the fly, and Rice has been struck by how calm the rookie looks in the middle of a homecoming that could rattle a young player.
“He keeps looking like a matured big leaguer out there, doing his thing,” Rice said. “He really slows it down well.”
For Boone, the night carried a broader point. The Yankees keep facing left-handed starters, and they have struggled to solve them at times. Beating Ray, who entered with a 3.14 ERA, was a box the manager wanted checked.
“Good to see that because, obviously we know we’re going to see our share of lefties,” Boone said. “So good to get some results there.”
A forced change in center that keeps paying off
The Jones story carries weight beyond one box score. Trent Grisham landed on the injured list Saturday with a right hamstring problem, and the Yankees called up outfielder Jasson Dominguez in a corresponding move. Grisham’s injury handed Jones the everyday center-field job sooner than the club had planned.
Boone said he now expects Jones to handle center regularly. The rookie has answered every time the Yankees have asked. He drove in the go-ahead run with a 10th-inning single in Friday’s 3-2 loss, then collected two more hits Saturday. He entered the day batting .400 against left-handers in 45 plate appearances this season.
The timing matters because Aaron Judge is close. Boone said the captain is “at the finish line to be ready to play,” and a return during the upcoming homestand is in play. A lineup Rice and Jones have carried could soon add its best hitter back, and the uncomfortable center-field decision the Yankees were inching toward may never have to be made.
Rodon and the bullpen turn in an October template
The pitching told the other half of the story. Carlos Rodon earned his first win in five starts, holding the Padres to one run and two hits over five innings while striking out seven and walking three across 89 pitches. His lone blemish was a Manny Machado leadoff homer in the fourth, the slugger’s 25th of the year. It was Rodon’s first time completing five innings in his four starts back from left elbow inflammation.
Even so, Rodon wanted more from himself. He kept circling the parts of the outing he felt he left unfinished, even with the win in hand.
“There’s some things I’d like to refine, to be more crisp in the zone and get ahead,” Rodon said. “But we won, and that’s what matters.”
From there, the game turned into a bullpen showcase, the kind of blueprint that wins in the postseason. Four Yankees relievers, Michael Fulmer, Brent Headrick, John Schreiber and Tim Hill, combined for four scoreless innings. Hill allowed the only hit of the group, a harmless ninth-inning single to Austin Hays. San Diego managed just one hit after the fourth.
The win pulled the Yankees within a game of clinching a 34th consecutive winning season, a streak dating to 1993. The road trip ends Sunday afternoon in a rubber game, with Gerrit Cole set to face former Yankee Michael King. With 20 games left, New York remains in control of the wild-card race, still chasing the Rays and now doing it with an offense that just showed a different, more dangerous way to score.
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
