In Gauntlet Portion Of The Schedule, The New York Yankees Acquitted Themselves Well

In his first season with the Red Sox, Garrett Crochet is up to 240 strikeouts in 191 1/3 innings and Boston is 21-9 in those starts.

Against the Yankees, Crochet owns 27 1/3 innings of experience with 39 strikeouts in four starts – all wins for the Red Sox, who ended this season with a 9-4 edge in the season matchups.

Knowing Crochet was at the end of their 12-game gauntlet against current playoff teams, it made things highly imperative for the Yankees to get the first two games and hope they could find a way to sneak onto Minnesota with a third win.

A six-run first inning put the Yankees in an early hole before NBC began the game between the Falcons and Vikings.

The Yankees did not get the win over Crochet but came close, still they emerged with some continued good vibes about things. As bad as the Yankees were for about two-plus months from May 30-Aug. 5, they are equally as good since the slide dropped them to six games under .500 following a shutout loss in Texas.

Since then they are 23-11 and winning seven of 12 in their gauntlet against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox qualifies as success. While bad tendencies showed up in each loss enough good things seemed to appear in the wins.

Plenty of strong things appeared in the first two games in Boston on the mound between a gutty effort from Luis Gil along with more of Max Fried’s continued turnaround, which is up to five straight wins.

The past 12 games also helped change some of the perception about performing against good teams. After this stretch, the Yankees are 45-44 against teams who are currently at .500 or better.

Next up are the final 13 against teams with losing records, though those games can still be dangerous, just ask the Mets about those. The Mets killed all the buzz from sweeping the Phillies and getting within four of the NL East lead by dropping three of four from the Marlins two weekends ago and lost 12 of 16 before Pete Alonso’s game-ending homer saved them from their first nine-game skid since the last months of Art Howe’s tenure managing them in 2004.

Still the Yankees are seemingly in better position given how the starting pitching for the most part is performing and how Aaron Judge is progressing.

While there are questions about his arm in right field following a strained flexor tendon in his right elbow, there are hardly any about his bat. Judge hit .340 with five homers and possibly cemented his first batting title.

Judge nearly fell out of the top spot a few days ago, but now holds an eight-point lead over Jacob Wilson after hitting his 363th career homer, capping a stretch where he passed Yogi Berra, tied Joe DiMaggio and passed him two nights later in an event that was moderately overshadowed by someone visiting the team.

Then there is Cody Bellinger, who is the Yankees MVP if you do not include Judge’s resume. Bellinger might have had one of the best at-bats of the season Saturday against Aroldis Chapman and although he was hitless in the final game of the gauntlet, he went 8-for-23 in the six games preceding Sunday’s loss.

Another thing to take away from this stretch is what shortstop might look like.

For months the Yankees defended Anthony Volpe as his average plummeted and his defensive woes emerged with an AL-worst 19 errors. Then came Thursday as extra people descended on Yankee Stadium for some reason when the Yankees decided to confess Volpe was playing with a partially torn labrum since May 3.

A partially torn labrum might explain some things for Volpe, whose drop-off is so precipitous it led to a two-day benching two weeks ago and an inability to even get on base and called for him to sit more often.

It also confirmed the Yankees best option might be to keep Jose Caballero’s bat in the lineup consistently and go with him at shortstop most nights. Caballero has started the past four games at shortstop, and every grounder hit his way is not the hold your breath experience as it was with Volpe.

The status of shortstop remains among the things left for the Yankees to figure out.

Also on the agenda is the Yankees continuing to play well against teams with losing records while getting some stress-free wins on occasion like they did against the Washington Nationals three weeks ago.

Things are better for the Yankees than six weeks ago and now it is their responsibility to finish things up properly. The division seems unlikely but until it becomes official the Yankees might as well try to inch as close as possible while securing their place as the wild-card team with homefield advantage.