WASHINGTON, D.C. — Matt Krook threw a 1-1 sweeper that caught too much of the plate. Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit it into the second deck. And a date that was already in the Yankees lore delivers again a lucky charm.
The homer arrived with one out in the ninth inning Friday night, a two-run drive that turned a 3-2 deficit into a 3-3 tie and then a lead. Austin Wells added another homer two batters later. The Yankees won 5-3.
A sellout crowd of 38,085 at Nationals Park had been standing for a different reason moments earlier. Washington had taken the lead in the seventh and handed the ball to its bullpen, the worst late-inning group in the sport.
What happened next was not new. It was not even new for the date.
A comeback with a familiar fingerprint
One year earlier, on July 10, 2025, the Yankees were hitless through seven innings and trailing Seattle 5-0. Their win probability fell to 1.3 percent. Bryan Woo was carrying a no-hitter.
Chisholm broke it up leading off the eighth. Wells drove in the first run on a sacrifice fly, tied the game with a two-run single in the ninth. Stanton homered and Aaron Judge won it with a sacrifice fly in the 10th. The Yankees became the first team since the 1977 Pirates to win after being hitless and down five entering the eighth.
The names on Friday’s rally were the same. Chisholm and Wells, again, on July 10, again, delivering the runs that flipped a loss.
The Yankees were trailing 3-2 in the ninth. Chisholm hit a two-run homer to 374ft at 100.6 MPH and it turned score to 4-3 in their favor.
Then, Wells added an insurance home run, hi second home run in two games. It goes 387ft at 108 MPH.
The Yankees now have four wins this season when trailing entering the ninth inning, the most in the American League.
Chisholm was not sure he had hit it far enough. He had spent recent games squaring balls up without reward, and for a moment he thought this one would die on the warning track.
“I thought I missed it, I’m not going to lie,” Chisholm said.
He had also become the Yankees’ emotional center this week. A night earlier, before a 12-4 win over Tampa Bay, he stood up in the hitters meeting and told the room they were better than their slump. He connected Friday’s finish to that same idea.
“When we are together, we’re unstoppable,” Chisholm said.
Boone also suggested the 27-year-old is rounding into the player the Yankees expected when they built around him.
A game decided entirely by the long ball
The Yankees and Nationals entered Friday ranked one and two in the majors in home runs. Fitting, then, that all but one run scored on a homer.
Ben Rice started it nine pitches into the night, driving his 29th home run of the season past a leaping Dylan Crews in left. It was his seventh homer in 10 games and moved him within one of Yordan Alvarez for the American League lead. Rice fouled a pitch off his right leg in the fifth and stayed in.
Jasson Dominguez gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead in the fourth, a 408-foot solo shot to right-center off Zack Littell. Paul Goldschmidt singled in the first to end an 0-for-34 drought, the worst of his career.
The lead did not hold. With two outs in the seventh, Keibert Ruiz and James Wood homered on consecutive pitches off left-hander Tim Hill, and Washington led 3-2. The Yankees had been leading despite stranding runners all night. They finished 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position and left eight on base.
Ryan Weathers deserved better. The left-hander held Washington to one run over 5 1/3 innings, striking out six and walking none, and left with a no-decision after Hill surrendered the lead.
Four back, with the break in sight
David Bednar retired the final six Nationals, allowing only a hit batter, to earn the win in relief. Littell took the loss. The Yankees have won three of five and remain four games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East.
The victory did more than move a number. It gave a team that lost 15 of 20 before this week a second straight night of the kind of baseball it had been missing, and a second July 10 that bent its way.
Manager Aaron Boone had watched his club pile up hits without scoring for much of the night, then win it in three swings. He called the finish the product of a locker room that refused to fold.
“A gritty win by a lot of people in that room,” Boone said.
The Yankees continue the series Saturday afternoon in Washington. Cam Schlittler, coming off eight strong innings against the Rays, faces veteran Miles Mikolas. First pitch is set for 4:05 p.m.
Whether July 10 is a charm or a coincidence, the Yankees have now spent two of them turning near-certain defeat into a win, with the same two hitters signing the finish.
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