NEW YORK — The bases were loaded, the game was tied and Yankee Stadium had that familiar sinking feeling.
A night earlier, this exact situation had swallowed the Yankees whole. Their bullpen coughed up a late lead to the Houston Astros and the offense went quiet in a 9-7 loss. Now, in the seventh inning Wednesday, it was happening again.
Houston had just tied the game 3-3. There was one out, runners everywhere and the middle of the Astros order coming up. One more hit could have broken the night open the wrong way.
Then a journeyman right-hander changed everything without anyone quite noticing.
Paul Blackburn, pitching in relief, escaped the jam without allowing another run. The Yankees scored four times in the bottom of the inning and pulled away for a 9-3 win in front of 40,269, evening the series and pushing them to seven wins in nine games.
The Blackburn escape that turned the game
The seventh started to slip away quickly. Starter Elmer Rodriguez walked Jose Altuve to open the inning and was lifted. Blackburn came on and gave up a double to Daulton Varsho, putting runners on second and third with nobody out.
Then George Lombard Jr. booted a grounder from Christian Walker, and Altuve scored the tying run. The bases stayed full of trouble. This was the moment Tuesday’s collapse threatened to repeat.
Blackburn refused to let it. He made a heads-up play on a grounder back to the mound, noticed Varsho had drifted too far off third and ran him down for the tag. Then he struck out Christian Vazquez and Jeremy Pena, stranding all three runners and keeping the score tied at 3-3.
It was one inning, one hit and one walk in the box score. It was also the hinge the entire game swung on. The Yankees have now won 29 times this season when tied or trailing in the seventh inning or later, the most in the majors, according to team data.
Four runs answer right back
The Yankees did not wait to reward the escape. In the bottom of the seventh, against Houston left-hander Bennett Sousa, the first four batters reached and scored.
Trent Grisham singled, Ben Rice walked and Luis Garcia Jr. beat out an infield single to load the bases with nobody out. Cody Bellinger then drilled a two-run double off the wall in right-center to put New York ahead 5-3.
Spencer Jones followed with an RBI single, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. banked a double off the left-field wall for a 7-3 lead. All nine Yankees came to the plate in the inning. Sousa recorded just one out while allowing five hits and four earned runs.
Garcia added a two-run homer in the eighth, his 28th of the season, for the final margin. The Yankees finished with 13 hits to Houston’s four.
Boone sees Yankees lineup he waited months to find
The outburst extended a trend that has quietly reshaped the Yankees’ August. They have now scored at least seven runs in three straight games, all part of a homestand that has the lineup looking whole again even without Aaron Judge.
Manager Aaron Boone has spent months insisting the bats would come around. After a 13-hit night, he sounded relieved to finally see it.
“It has been nice to see them start to really gain some traction,” Boone said.
No player has worn the offense’s struggles more visibly than Chisholm, who reached base four times and now has eight hits over his past three games. Boone singled him out.
“It’s probably the best few games he’s strung together,” Boone said. “So, hopefully, that’s where he’s headed.”
Chisholm, whose season has tested him publicly, kept his focus on the bigger goal.
“I really want to win a World Series,” Chisholm said. “I’m just trying to get ready and do my best to get us there.”
The comeback number that sets Yankees apart
One statistic captures how this team has survived a brutal stretch of injuries. Bellinger’s seventh-inning double was the Yankees’ 36th hit this season in the seventh inning or later that gave them a lead. No other team entered Wednesday with more than 27 such hits, according to team data.
That knack for late offense has carried a lineup missing Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. It showed up again in the way the Yankees answered every Houston push, scoring in the bottom half of the first, fourth and seventh after the Astros scored in the top.
Rice supplied the other milestone. His first-inning solo homer, his 35th of the year, snapped a 23-game streak without a Yankees run in the first inning, a drought that had crept within one game of the franchise record. The blast also made Rice one of only three Yankees draft picks to reach 35 home runs in a season, joining Judge and Don Mattingly, according to game coverage.
A lopsided win that still leaves one worry
The night was not flawless. Lombard committed an error for the fifth straight game, the miscue that let Houston tie it in the seventh. Grisham also misplayed a ball in the first that let the Astros score. Boone had recently called the rookie’s defensive lapses a small bump in the road, but the errors keep coming.
Rodriguez, meanwhile, gave the pitching staff a lift it badly needed. Filling in amid injuries to Max Fried, Ryan Weathers and Fernando Cruz, the rookie tossed six innings and allowed three runs on three hits with a career-high six strikeouts, his sinker touching 97 mph. Michael Fulmer, signed to a major league deal hours before first pitch to cover for Cruz, worked a perfect eighth.
The Yankees improved to 75-57, holding the American League’s top wild-card spot with the Boston Red Sox 2.5 games back. They remained 3.5 games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East. Houston fell to 66-67.
The offense covered every mistake Wednesday. In October, the margins shrink. For one night, though, an overlooked escape by a journeyman reliever was the difference, and the Yankees look more dangerous than they have in months.
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