WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ben Rice did not think he had hit it hard enough. He watched the ball drift toward the left-center wall at Nationals Park, unsure whether it would carry or die in a glove. It kept going.
Dylan Crews crashed into the wall. The ball rolled free. Two runs came around, and the Yankees had the lead they had been chasing all afternoon.
That two-out triple in the eighth inning Sunday turned a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 edge and sent the Yankees to a 5-3 win over the Nationals. It also finished a three-game sweep in the strangest possible fashion.
For the third day in a row, the Yankees had trailed after seven innings. For the third day in a row, they found a way out.
A comeback that ran through the whole roster
The pattern held all weekend. On Friday, Jazz Chisholm Jr. tied it with a ninth-inning homer. On Saturday, Ryan McMahon, Trent Grisham and Paul Goldschmidt went deep in a four-run eighth. On Sunday, the offense did not hit a single home run and still came back. Different names, same result, three days running.
On Sunday, the Yankees entered the fifth inning down 1-0 before their offense finally broke through. Cody Bellinger opened the frame with a double and scored when Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled. A wild pitch advanced Chisholm to second, and birthday boy Austin Wells followed with a two-out RBI single that put New York ahead, 2-1.
Washington answered in the sixth when pinch-hitter Curtis Mead launched a game-tying home run. The Nationals regained the lead an inning later after Chisholm’s two-out throwing error allowed the go-ahead run to score.
The Yankees improved to 6-34 when trailing after seven innings. Remarkably, three of those six victories came during this series.
Rice came up with two outs and two on after Max Schuemann singled and stole second and Grisham walked. He worked the at-bat, then drove a fly ball the other way that Washington’s outfield could not run down.
The drive left the bat at 100.8 mph and traveled a projected 383 feet. Rice, an All-Star headed to the Home Run Derby, admitted he was not sure it would drop.
“I didn’t think I got it quite right, but I saw it kept going,” Rice said.
Jose Caballero added an insurance run in the ninth with a sacrifice fly. Ryan Yarbrough picked up the win in relief. Paul Blackburn closed the final six outs for his first save, needed because closer David Bednar and Fernando Cruz were both unavailable.
The number that put this sweep in the record books
Here is what made the afternoon more than a get-well win before the break. It was the first time the Yankees swept a series of at least three games while trailing in the eighth inning or later of every game since May 1910, when the franchise was still called the Highlanders and beat the Cleveland Naps. That is 116 years.
The feat is nearly as rare across the sport. The last major league team to do it was Colorado in June 2014, when the Rockies took three straight at San Francisco.
There is more buried in the box scores. The Yankees won three straight games while trailing in the eighth inning or later for the first time since at least 1974, and only the second such sweep in franchise history.
The comeback math is stark. The Yankees are now 6-34 when trailing after seven innings this season, and half of those six wins came in this one series.
What Boone saw in the response
The sweep closed a stretch that had tested the clubhouse. The Yankees had staggered through a 1-9 slide from late June into July before this road trip steadied them. Manager Aaron Boone framed the weekend as an answer to that skid rather than a finished product.
“That’s the mentality we got to have,” Rice said.
Boone pointed to the way his pitching staff held down the majors’ highest-scoring offense long enough for the bats to strike late. Will Warren gave up a leadoff homer to James Wood, then threw five innings and allowed just the one run. Over the three games, Ryan Weathers, Cam Schlittler and Warren combined to give up only four runs across 17 innings against a lineup that entered the day scoring more than anyone in baseball.
“You get punched in the mouth, you got to stay in the fight,” Warren said.
Boone kept his own summary short and pointed to the calendar, not the trophy case.
“We are in July. We got a long ways to go in this,” Boone said.
Where the Yankees stand at the break
The win pushed the Yankees to 54-42 at the All-Star break, a .563 mark. It was their 30th consecutive season with a .500-or-better record at the break, the second-longest such streak in major league history behind their own run from 1933 to 1964.
The late-game wins are piling up in a way the rest of the league has noticed. The Yankees now have eight victories when trailing in the eighth inning or later, tied with the White Sox for the most in the American League.
It was also their fourth straight win, their seventh sweep of the season and their 24th comeback victory. A four-game winning streak into the break is something the Yankees have managed only three times in the last 40 years, joining the 1998 and 2004 clubs.
The standings still leave work to do. New York sits second in the AL East, three games behind the Tampa Bay Rays. The club returns Friday in the Bronx against the Los Angeles Dodgers, carrying a first half that ended with a franchise rarity a century in the making.
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