When the Yankees gave Marcus Stroman a breather after consecutive ugly starts nearly a month ago, this was the response they hoped for.
With nine days between outings, Stroman went to work on his mechanics.
Those adjustments have paid off.
The veteran right-hander has been a different pitcher since that brief break.
He continued his ascension Friday night, scattering nine hits over seven impressive innings in a 6-3 win over the Cardinals at the Stadium.
“I feel like he’s just behind all of his pitches,” said catcher Austin Wells, who hit a pair of two-run homers in the victory. “He’s hitting some better spots than he was, and it’s working out really well for him.”
Stroman has now delivered four straight strong starts in which he has allowed a total of six earned runs over 23 innings.
He has gone at least five innings in all four outings, three of them Yankees victories.
This was his best performance of the aforementioned four, because of the length he gave the Yankees and the fact they were coming off a disappointing series loss to the Nationals.
“I just felt very comfortable with my mechanics. I felt like I was able to execute my pitches,” said Stroman, who improved to 10-6 in his first season as a Yankee and lowered his ERA to 3.81. “I felt like my sinker was pretty good. When my sinker is good, I can kind of pitch off of that. That’s my bread and butter. When I’m keeping it down in the zone, I feel like I’m usually limiting hard damage.”
He didn’t miss many bats — Stroman only struck out five — but he allowed only one extra-base hit, a Paul Goldschmidt double in the second inning, and got better as the game went on.
He faced the minimum over his final four innings, thanks to a pair of double plays, and retired the Cardinals in order in the seventh.
“He was probably at his best there in the sixth and seventh,” manager Aaron Boone. “I was going to be short with him there in the sixth and the seventh, and I thought he just finished really strong. …. I feel like the stuff is just a little crisper, whether that’s a mile an hour [faster], I don’t know. But it feels like it’s just a little sharper from watching him from the side.”