12 hits, 6 arms key Yanks win before Iowa trip

KANSAS CITY -- The name of the game for the Yankees on Wednesday was rallies -- both their ability to string them together early on offense and shut them down on the mound when the Royals began to do the same.

New York pelted Kansas City starter Brady Singer for 10 hits in 3 2/3 innings, scoring five times and keeping the pressure on en route to a 5-2 victory at Kauffman Stadium. It sealed the series win for the Yankees, who leave town for Dyersville, Iowa, where they will play the White Sox in the Field of Dreams Game on Thursday.

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It marked the ninth series win in the last 10 opportunities for New York, which has proven resilient as of late while managing numerous injuries and COVID-related absences. And while the team has been landing in the win column recently and accomplished a lot of positive things on Wednesday, manager Aaron Boone isn’t leaving the Show-Me State entirely satisfied with his team’s performance.

"There's a lot of good things that happened today,” Boone said. “Obviously, all the bullpen guys really came up big for us. We had some key performances. To throw a three-spot there in the first inning was huge. But overall though, we didn't play very well today, and we're fortunate to get out of here with another win. We need to play a little bit better than that."

Leading the way was the bullpen -- six pitchers took the mound for the Yankees as they strung together a strong cohesive effort to stifle the Royals’ attempts at creating runs. Lucas Luetge was the game’s starter, and despite allowing a run to score in the first, he was mostly solid, yielding just two hits and walking none with a strikeout.

It was surprisingly the first career big league start for Luetge, who at 34, had pitched in parts of five Major League seasons since being drafted in 2008. He was certainly grateful for the opportunity, but joked that he wasn’t the biggest fan of starting the game on the rubber and not in the bullpen.

"I don't like to know that I'm going to pitch,” Luetge said. “I prefer just to hear the phone ring and hear my name called. So the stomach was bubbling. It's just -- knowing you have to go out there, it's just different."

Following Luetge was Albert Abreu, who played maybe the most significant role in shutting down the rally-prone Kansas City offense. The first such occasion came in the third, when Whit Merrifield singled and advanced to second on a balk. Abreu didn’t let that rattle him, getting Nicky Lopez to ground out and Salvador Perez to go down swinging to end the inning. Abreu walked the tightrope again in the next frame. After allowing a pair of one-out singles, he struck out Michael A. Taylor and Emmanuel Rivera to escape with another scoreless frame.

Kansas City threatened once more in the ninth, putting runners on first and second and bringing pinch-hitter Carlos Santana to the plate representing the potential tying run. Zack Britton stopped it there, though, getting Santana to ground into a game-ending double play to earn his first save of the season. Boone was grateful for the performance, both in terms of this game and in the bigger picture.

"He threw really well,” Boone said. “Obviously, he hits the first guy with two strikes. But after that, his stuff really ticked up. … Yeah, encouraging to see him throwing the ball like that, and hopefully, it's something he can continue to build on."

Offensively, the Yankees got after it right away, as a single and a pair of walks loaded the bases with just one out in the first. Luke Voit knocked in a couple runs with a single to right, and Rougned Odor followed with a base hit of his own to make it a 3-0 ballgame and summon a mound visit for Singer.

New York racked up two singles, a double and a walk over the next two frames, but Singer was able to escape with two zeroes in the run column. That wasn’t the case in the fourth, however, as Tyler Wade doubled, stole third and scored on a DJ LeMahieu single to make it 4-1. Brett Gardner and Aaron Judge followed with a pair of hits, bringing in Wade and knocking Singer from the game.

Wade noted that the team’s ability to jump on Singer early came partly due to in-game and pregame communication, a sentiment that Judge echoed and said came, in part, from hitting coaches Marcus Thames and P.J. Pilittere.

“They kind of said, 'Hey, let's go out there, we've got a guy on the mound that throws a lot of strikes, let's try to hit him early and get some runs on the board and support our pitching staff a little bit so they can kind of get in there and get in their groove and do what they need to do,'” Judge said.

All in all, it was a cohesive team victory for the Yankees, who needed one to wrap up a rollercoaster of a series that featured a four-hour, 52-minute marathon win on Monday and a flush-it loss on Tuesday in which they committed four errors. They depart Kansas City 6 1/2 games back of Tampa Bay in the AL East and 1 1/2 back of Boston for the final AL Wild Card spot. The Rays and Red Sox square off Wednesday night in Boston.

And while Boone is right that they could’ve played a lot better both Wednesday and in the series overall, it’s important to remember that no matter how much room for improvement there is, they’ve still won nine of 10 series despite the adversity.

“We've been kind of waiting to get to full-strength,” Judge said. “Made some big moves and we're hoping that this will be kind of moving in the right direction, add on some guys that are big pieces, and let's get 'er rolling.

“But once again, we got hit with a couple things, and lose some starters, lose some good position players. But this team's resilient. This team's always in the fight, it doesn't matter who kind of goes down. We've always got guys who want to step up and are hungry and ready to play, and that's what we've kind of seen over the past couple series."