New 'kids' are all right for Yankees

The new kids on the block, the block being 161st St. in the Bronx, aren’t really kids at all. Anthony Rizzo turns 32 on Sunday. Joey Gallo is 27. Both of them got traded to the Yankees a week ago. They were brought to the big city to be difference makers. So far, so good. Maybe you can remember two Trade Deadline acquisitions that have had this kind of an impact on the Yankees this quickly, but I sure can’t.

Gallo hit his first big fly as a Yankee in his new stadium on Thursday night, at a crazy 48 degree launch angle. One of Gallo’s old teammates told him after that game that the ball -- which finally landed a few rows into the right-field stands, 335 feet from home plate -- would have been an “F9” if he were still with the Rangers.

But Joey Gallo isn’t in Texas anymore. His home is Yankee Stadium, and he’d hit the highest home run any Yankee has hit this season, one that you thought might have clipped the moon as Gallo craned his neck and watched the flight of the ball as he took off for first base. He had come to the plate with two on and two out in the bottom of the seventh and the Yankees trailing the Mariners, 3-2. When the ball landed it was 5-3 Yankees, and they were now 6-1 since Gallo and Rizzo had become Yankees.

Just like that, after being short on left-handed threats all season, they now have Gallo and Rizzo, two good New York City names. The Yankees look like a different team. It looks like a different Yankee season suddenly, in just the first week of August.

They don’t have Gerrit Cole right now, because he has tested positive for COVID. Same with the catcher, Gary Sánchez. But they have the new kids on the block in the Bronx. The Yankees go into Friday night’s game against the Mariners just 5 1/2 games behind the first-place Rays, four behind the Red Sox (three in the loss column), and a game ahead of the Blue Jays, who are mashing even more than the Yankees are since the Deadline.

Rizzo and Gallo showed up when the Yankees were playing the Marlins last weekend in Miami. Rizzo hit a home run in his first game and the Yankees won. Then he hit another one in his second game and the Yankees won again. Before you knew it, Rizzo had RBIs in his first six games with his new team, something no Yankee had ever done. Even more than Gallo, Rizzo is the one who has immediately lengthened the Yankee order, changed its personality, even as he seems to be in the process of changing the team’s personality.

The Yankees weren’t much fun to watch across the first four months of the season. But they have a chance to be something to see over the last two. The Blue Jays are right behind them, with the same 49 losses the Yankees have. The Red Sox are in a world of trouble, and might be in fourth place by early next week after spending as much time as they have in first this season. The Rays? You know the deal with them. They're not going away.

But it is the Yankees, just over the last week, who have gotten the attention of everybody in their division. It all happened after general manager Brian Cashman made the trades for Gallo, whom Cashman had coveted much of the season, and Rizzo, who was as much a surprise coming to New York as Max Scherzer was going to Los Angeles. As much power as Gallo has, and though he turned a loss into a win on Thursday night with one swing of the bat, it is Rizzo who is the kind of professional hitter the Yankees have lacked this season, especially with DJ LeMahieu hitting nearly 100 points worse this season than he did in the short season of 2020.

“I think it’s the weight of our lineup starting to pay some dividends,” Aaron Boone said the other day. “If you look at our lineup now, there's some balance there. I really do feel like our best offensive days are still ahead of us as this group continues to get together.”

This is what Gallo said after his swing had won his team the first game of the Mariners series:

“You could feel that that could be a game-changing at-bat, and I was happy that I was able to come through and help the team win, because I feel like there were a couple opportunities where I could have done that this week and I didn’t. Obviously, it felt pretty good to do that today.”

Gallo hitting his first big moonshot at Yankee Stadium was only a matter of time. Only a week so far. Look at the dividends the new kids on the block are already paying. Block party all of a sudden on 161st.