A Dynamic Day With The Yankees And Mets In A Playoff Race

It would be accurate to describe the opening weeks of August as dog days for both the Yankees and Mets and the two teams in baseball’s market experienced various lows, resulting in the Blue Jays and Phillies gaining some semi-comfortable distance atop the AL East and NL East.

During the period of Aug. 1-10, the Yankees dropped seven of nine, losing three excruciating games in Miami and Texas, resulting in a change in the closer from Devin Williams to David Bednar and some pointed criticism from various former players ahead of the first Old-Timer’s Day game since 2019 on Aug. 9.

During the span of July 28-Aug. 15, the Mets were losers of 13 of 15 games, resulting in them going from holding a 1 1/2 game lead over the Phillies to facing a six-game deficit. Nine losses were by three runs or less, including walk off losses in San Diego and Milwaukee and being two outs away from being no-hit in by Cleveland on Aug. 6.

These dreary events occurred at different times within the New York city limits because it is rare the teams are home at the same time. The Mets hosted the Braves Aug. 12-14 while the Yankees played the Twins at home Aug. 11-13, but the Yankees did not schedule a day game for the getaway game, so the teams played at the same time after lengthy rain delays pushed back the first pitch roughly two hours.

Recently the Yankees and Mets appeared to be steadying things or improving their situations and observers got a full chance to see exactly how those improvements are going in a span of five hours, six minutes on Wednesday if they were willing to take the roughly 60-minute trip on the subway between the stadiums.

In a game that lasted two hours, 54 minutes, the Yankees easily cruised to an 11-2 victory over the last place Nationals which allowed them to keep pace with the Red Sox and Blue Jays as those teams secured victories in the late innings Wednesday night.

It was one of those series against a bad team where the Yankees did what they needed to do, get three wins and see those wins achieved with relative ease by outscoring the NL’s second-worst team by a 26-8 margin and getting stellar pitching from rookie Cam Schlittler and a strong showing by Max Fried, who almost had a bulletin on the wire because he lost a no-hit bid in the sixth.

The exact evidence of how easy the Yankees handled the Nationals could be seen during a 41-minute third inning that occurred about five hours before Nolan McLean threw the first pitch of his third career start for the Mets in the finale of a pivotal series against the Phillies.

It occurred after some online consternation about the Yankees getting a leadoff homer, loading the bases and settling for one run. By the third inning, those concerns were flushed away with an inning so impressive that the Yankees sent 15 to the plate, homered four times and saw 77 pitches – or 18 fewer than what McLean threw to 27 hitters in eight innings in Queens.

The Yankees wound up hitting 10 homers in the series after hitting four in the clean series finale against the Red Sox, who dominated them to a 19-4 margin in the first three games, culminating in an ugly 12-1 loss that led to things like Anthony Volpe sitting for two days.

On Wednesday afternoon, the lineup was devoid of Giancarlo Stanton, who was coming off a continuation of his appreciation society after a 451-foot homer and five RBIs left him with a .313 average. On days when the Yankees do not play Stanton, they can fall back on the option of the slugger being a pinch hitter in a close game in the late innings.

About three hours after manager Aaron Boone discussed his reasoning for Stanton not playing, his team made any need for him irrelevant by doing things like Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger homering on consecutive pitches along with Ryan McMahon hitting a three-run homer and Ben Rice homering.

It was the Yankees’ fourth game with at least six homers. The last time the Yankees had that many games with six homers was in 2019 and before Boone’s second season as managing was 2005. It was the 40th time in team history in which the Yankees homered at least six times in a game.

The massive inning featured eight hits, three walks and a catcher’s interference which broke the left finger of Washington backstop Drew Millas. The injury resulted in the Nationals losing their designated hitter and forcing reliever Shinnosuke Ogasawara to take an at-bat after throwing the final 41 pitches of the third.

When it was over, Boone offered a perfect summary of his team’s eighth straight win over a team with a losing record by saying:

“It was outstanding. That was some banging right there.”

About five-plus hours later, former Yankee bench coach and second-year Mets manager Carlos Mendoza was able to discuss something outstanding of his own – the performance of McLean, who allowed four hits with a dynamic outing that pulled the Mets within four of the Phillies.

It was a rare showing in this era. It was the third time the Mets saw a starter complete eight innings and the 71st such outing this season.

It also continued a recent uptick for the Mets, who are 8-3 in their past 11 games and were an astounding 21-for-37 with runners in scoring position in the series against Philadelphia. It is a stretch that coincides with McLean’s debut against the Mariners on Aug. 16 – a day after Cal Raleigh reached 100 RBIs.

McLean was simply electric, getting six different pitches to make an impact. Among them were 28 sweepers averaging 85.7 and resulting in 13 called strikes and whiffs.

While it did not leave Mendoza speechless, it came close.

“All I can say is ‘Wow,” Mendoza said about seven hours after his former team’s massive inning.

McLean wowed all those playing behind him with an must see show where he threw 24 pitches out of the strike zone.

“He’s a stud, man,” Mark Vientos said.

McLean’s mesmerizing performance resulted in him becoming the first player in team history to win his first three starts. It eclipsed what Tom Seaver (two wins, three earned runs, 18 strikeouts, 22 2/3 innings) and Dwight Gooden (one win, seven earned runs, 16 strikeouts, 13 1/3 innings) did in their initial three starts in 1967 and 1984 respectively.

Across the way from the McLean appreciation society, the Phillies were ready to move on and seemed hardly fazed by their 10-game road losing streak to the Mets, whom they host for four games in about two weeks.

“Who likes to lose? No one likes to lose,” Kyle Schwarber said after his hitless skid reached 20 at-bats. “But there’s nothing that can really faze us. We’ve been swept before this year. We bounced back. We’ve got to do the same thing. I’m not worried about it.”

Meanwhile while there are still some concerns about the New York baseball scene, two dynamic performances of differing aspects of the game in the city limits, left the vibes in a slightly better place than earlier this month.