NEW YORK — The bases were loaded with nobody out, and the Bronx felt like it was about to boil over. The Yankees had a chance to bury the best lineup in baseball in the fifth inning Sunday night, and instead they let it slip away.
For most of the evening, the story looked like another night of wasted chances. New York left nine runners on base through seven innings. It stranded that bases-loaded threat without a run. Against a Dodgers club that arrived at Yankee Stadium chasing a three-game sweep, that kind of waste usually ends badly.
But the offense was never going to be the reason this game was remembered.
The bullpen was.
Five Yankees relievers combined for nine innings and surrendered a single run on four hits, silencing a Dodgers order stacked with Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman in a 2-1 win that kept New York from being swept at home. On a night the lineup managed just two runs, the pitching staff carried a team that badly needed a win.
A bullpen game by necessity becomes a bullpen game by design
Manager Aaron Boone had no true starter to give. A Saturday rainout and Max Fried’s injury absence forced the Yankees to rearrange their rotation, and the nightcap of the doubleheader became a piece-it-together affair.
Boone handed the ball to lefty Ryan Yarbrough as an opener. Yarbrough answered with 2 2/3 scoreless innings on just 36 pitches. Paul Blackburn followed with 2 1/3 scoreless frames, recording seven outs and keeping the Dodgers off the board.
Then came Brent Headrick, who has quietly become the most reliable arm in the group. He threw two hitless innings and struck out three of the six batters he faced. Headrick has now not allowed a run in 41 of his 49 relief appearances this season, the most in the majors.
The plan was never supposed to work this cleanly. It did anyway.
Boone credits Yankees arms that set the tone
Boone had spent the afternoon watching the first game unravel late, and he entered the nightcap unsure how the innings would come together. When they came together this well, he made a point of crediting the men who started the effort.
“Yarbs getting almost three innings … he was great and efficient,” Boone said. “And then Blackburn being able to get seven outs for us. That was huge.”
The manager has leaned on Headrick through an uneven stretch earlier in the year, and he has watched the lefty answer every time. Boone singled out the way the reliever handled a brief rough patch this season.
“He’s been outstanding, really,” the Yankees added. “He’s pitched with a lot of confidence.”
David Bednar closed it out, and Boone made clear the veteran’s value goes past the numbers. He described a reliever who never worries about his role or the leverage of the moment.
“There’s no ego involved with it,” Boone said. “He just wants to win, and that’s apparent.”
Bednar and one swing from Jazz Chisholm Jr. settle it
The one blemish came in the eighth, when Fernando Cruz allowed a game-tying solo home run to pinch-hitter Tommy Edman. With two runners on and the lead gone, Boone called on Bednar early.
Bednar struck out Ohtani and retired Andy Pages to escape the eighth, then worked a tense ninth against the heart of the order. He fanned Betts on a splitter and finished a 1 2/3-inning save, his 19th of the season. The right-hander has now thrown 17 consecutive scoreless appearances, last allowing a run on May 18, and owns a 2.59 ERA.
The winning run belonged to Jazz Chisholm Jr. With one out and nobody on in the bottom of the eighth, he drove an Evan Phillips fastball the other way for his 14th home run of the year, restoring a 2-1 lead the Yankees would not give back.
New York had taken an early lead in the first, when Paul Goldschmidt doubled and Cody Bellinger singled him home. It was one of the few times all night the bats delivered when it mattered.
Yankees roster move and a division race still in reach
The win came at a cost paid earlier in the day. In Game 1, Boone emptied a struggling piece of his bullpen, and Jake Bird was charged with five runs as a 3-1 deficit ballooned to 8-1. Bird was optioned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre after the game with a 5.93 ERA.
The Yankees called up Kervin Castro to replace him, another internal look before the club is expected to add bullpen help at the trade deadline.
At 55-44, the Yankees sit 1.5 games behind the first-place Tampa Bay Rays in the AL East. Avoiding the sweep kept the gap from widening and kept a division race within reach.
Ryan Weathers is scheduled to start Monday as New York opens a home series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. There is help on the way, too. Carlos Rodon, dealing with left elbow inflammation, received a second round of shots Friday and was already playing catch on flat ground Sunday.
For one night, though, the Yankees did not need their hitters to be the story. They needed five arms to hold the line against the best lineup in the sport. The arms did.
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