ST. LOUIS -- Yankees general manager and senior vice president Brian Cashman addressed a wide range of topics on the field at Busch Stadium on Friday evening before the club's opener against the Cardinals. With every answer came a circling back to some of the same themes. No, the Yankees have not been having recent success. Yes, they do believe the roster has improved since the Trade Deadline and will yet display that improvement. No, there are no easy answers to the team’s recurring problems.
“We just need to win,” Cashman said when asked what the team needs to do to start winning. “The obvious answer to that question, to state the obvious, is we’ve got to win tonight’s game and keep it simple, one game at a time, but then string together win after win.”
Step one, check. The rest is to be determined.
The Yankees grinded out a 4-3 win over the Cardinals in the opener of a three-game set, powered by a two-run Jazz Chisholm Jr. home run and 5 1/3 strong innings from Luis Gil in his third start of the season.
Jasson Domínguez and Aaron Judge also drove in runs for the Yankees, who improved to 4-6 all time at Busch Stadium.
“I thought his at-bats were really good,” manager Aaron Boone said of Chisholm, who crushed his homer with a bat painted to resemble a strawberry ice cream cone as part of the Players’ Weekend celebration. “Obviously smokes the homer, but lines out his last time up, controlling the zone well. You know how he can impact the game when he’s locked in up there.”
“I don’t think it’s the bat,” Chisholm smiled before showing off some of his yet-to-be-revealed color options for the weekend.
The win was especially well-timed given the evening’s other results, as Cleveland dropped a 2-0 decision at home to Atlanta. That gives the Yankees 1 1/2 games of clearance for the final American League Wild Card spot, which may not have been their goal to start the season, but would at least give them a puncher’s chance of defending their 41st pennant.
“Right now, we’re not in control of the division, so our first goal is to try to win the American League East and automatically punch the ticket that way,” Cashman said. “If not, we’ll be fighting to punch a ticket a different way. And there’s a lot of time on the clock, but not enough time at the same time. I don’t want to misrepresent there’s not urgency, because there is.”
“I feel like we need to step it up anyway, no matter if he was here or not,” Chisholm said of Cashman’s drop-in. “No matter if he was here or not, we need to win games. We need to get to the playoffs and we need to win the World Series. That’s all our thought is right now.”
Gil’s season comes with its own urgency, as he missed the first five months of the year while recovering from a lat strain suffered during Spring Training. After a rocky first outing in Miami, Gil has allowed just three earned runs over 10 2/3 innings in his past two starts. He allowed just one hit in the first four innings on Friday night, finishing with four strikeouts and shaving more than two runs off the early returns for his season ERA.
“That’s what it’s all about,” Gil said through team Spanish interpreter Marlon Abreu. “Trying to find a way to keep getting better each outing out there.”
With the Blue Jays and Red Sox both grabbing one-run wins, Friday’s performance from Chisholm, Gil and the rest of the Yankees takes on the added importance of preventing further separation in the AL East, even as they build some of that into the Wild Card race. Cashman professed before the game a winter in which he envisioned tight races all the way through the season, and it has certainly played out true to that form.
“This is a very hard sport, and nothing is taken for granted,” Cashman said. “When I know this winter started, I looked at our division, and I knew it would be a dogfight. And obviously the first third, or maybe even the first half of the season, that didn't look like that. It didn't play out that way. But you don't win anything in the first third or the first half.
“As the season’s played out, it’s played out as predicted -- that this would be a dogfight.”