ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Sometimes, Clark Kent just can’t find a phone booth in time.
The Yankees remain in second place primarily because DJ LeMahieu couldn’t make three consecutive plays that he had conditioned us to believe were makeable. If their 7-2 loss to the Rays on Saturday night at Tropicana Field set them 1 ¹/₂ games behind their perennially upstart adversaries in the AL East, rather than a half-game atop the division, the Yankees’ negative result in this mostly exciting contest served as a reminder of what they’ve already accomplished with such a dilapidated roster.
“Over the course of a season, mistakes are going to happen, even with the best of guys,” manager Aaron Boone said of his stellar second baseman. “That’s just part of it. You chalk it up, when the really good ones make mistakes, it’s more a little fluky.”
Such was the nature of this game — and the nature of this game of baseball, speaking globally — that the Yankees spoke more passionately about the sixth-inning fastball from Yonny Chirinos that drilled Luke Voit’s left shoulder, immediately following LeMahieu’s game-tying homer, than the actual result. Keep an eye on Sunday’s series finale to see if any lingering tensions declare themselves.
Yet it also frustrated the Yankees that they couldn’t cash that anger in for a victory, especially since the game was tied when tempers flared. Instead, the bottom of the sixth turned it in the Rays’ favor, courtesy of the DJ Trilogy, which occurred just one night after LeMahieu turned a brilliant, seventh-inning double play to help preserve a 4-3 Yankees victory.
Unlike most trilogies, it started with the worst of the bunch. With two outs and Guillermo Herdia up, Avisail Garcia broke from first base for second. Gary Sanchez made a solid throw, only for it to somehow go under LeMahieu’s glove into center field, allowing Garcia to advance to third.
While the official scorer charged Sanchez with his seventh error of the season, LeMahieu acknowledged, “I should’ve had Gary’s ball that he threw down to second.”
Yankees reliever Jonathan Holder walked Heredia, then Willy Adames stroked a hard grounder to the left of second base. LeMahieu, shifted against the righty-hitting Adames, dove to stop the ball. Yet as he rose, LeMahieu couldn’t corral it, turning a possible out at first into an infield single as Garcia scored the go-ahead run.
The next batter, lefty-swinging ex-Yankee Ji-Man Choi, drilled a grounder into short right field, where LeMahieu was positioned better than in the previous play. Yet LeMahieu bounced the long throw to first and Luke Voit couldn’t hold on to it. As the ball got away from Voit, Heredia sped home for the insurance run.
That both plays were scored as hits reflected their degree of difficulty. Yet that you thought LeMahieu had a shot at both indicates the amount of good will LeMahieu, who also has excelled offensively, has created in a short time.
“It’s kind of a no-man’s land there a little bit,” Boone said of the area where Adames’ hit went. “It’s going to take a great play to make that one. And just kind of the placement and not hitting it quite hard enough on Choi’s ball made it kind of in between no man’s land play a little bit. It would’ve taken great plays to make both of those.”
“Sometimes you look really good on the shift, and sometimes you don’t,” LeMahieu said. “I just couldn’t come up with those plays.”
Yandy Diaz’s three-run, eighth-inning homer off Nestor Cortes Jr. put the game out of reach. There would be no legendary comebacks on this night, and the Yankees will leave town Sunday night without having moved into the division penthouse.
You could say these B-Yankees have conditioned us to expect the surreal, and reality bites. On Sunday, in the important series finale, their goal will be simple enough: Turn the extranormal back into the normal.