For eight innings, the only good things about this game were Juan Soto and Oswaldo Cabrera. The twosome represented the only real threats at the plate, with Soto driving in a pair of runs as the Yankees tried to claw back from deficits. Then in the ninth, one of the more thrilling innings in recent memory, New York came all the way back. The Captain put them ahead, and they salvaged a game in this Toronto series with a 6-4 victory.
We’re not going to start with the ninth inning; we’re actually going to start with the eighth and with Mr. Soto. After already plating the Yankees’ first run with a double earlier in the game, Childish Bambino seemed to wake up the whole dugout on a long, long fly ball:
New York was still down two with just five outs to give, but that home run felt like a jolt to the rest of the boys. Leading off the ninth, the previously-hitless Giancarlo Stanton got in on the fun — 446 feet worth of fun at that.
Mark that as career homer No. 407 for Stanton, tying Brooklyn legend Duke Snider for 57th on the all-time list.
Gleyber Torres also seemed to get a spark from Soto, as he knocked a single up the middle after striking out in each of his three previous plate appearances. I was trying to come up with just the right metaphor for how lost Gleyber has been lately, but hopefully that big hit helped spur something in the second baseman. Like last night, Alex Verdugo thumped a ninth-inning double to put two men in scoring position, with the score now 4-3.
Jays manager John Schneider elected to go with lefty Tim Mayza, and Aaron Boone’s corresponding move was to pinch-hit Jose Trevino for Austin Wells. I didn’t love that decision, but boy did I love the result:
Tie game, and two batters later, who else was at the dish but Juan Soto. He is perpetually in the center of the action, becoming more and more the protagonist of this season with each at-bat. This time, he battled for a walk, shaking off a poor strike zone to reach base for the fifth time in the game, and setting up a huge moment for Aaron Judge.
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