The way he’s been hitting lately, Chase Headley probably didn’t want Sunday off. But he was not in the starting lineup against the White Sox.
Headley didn’t get a whole day of rest, though. Called upon to pinch hit in the seventh inning, Headley delivered a tiebreaking RBI double as the Yankees concluded a successful homestand with a 7-5 victory at Yankee Stadium.
Headley, who broke out of a dreadful slump this week with his first two home runs of the season, helped the Yankees overcome a misstep by the first part of their three-man bullpen of doom.
The Yankees had a zigzagging game right where they wanted it when Dellin Betances took the mound with a 5-4 lead to start the seventh inning. They had taken the lead in the sixth on Carlos Beltran’s two-run home run, which was the 400th of his career.
But, before the Yankees could replicate Saturday’s smash debut of Betances to Andrew Miller to Aroldis Chapman, the White Sox tied the game at 5 on Melky Cabrera’s RBI double.
Betances (1-2) did put himself in line for the win by keeping the game tied. With runners on second and third, he got Brett Lawrie on a grounder to short with the infield in and struck out Avisail Garcia and Alex Avila to end the inning.
Headley gave the Yankees the lead for good with a booming double to right-center off Matt Albers (1-2) that scored Didi Gregorius, who had walked with two outs.
Headley’s batting average is up to .200. That might not seem like much, but he needed to go 9-for-25 (.360) on the home stand to reach that mark.
Retaking the lead allowed manager Joe Girardi to call in Miller for the eighth and Chapman for the ninth. The Yankees’ trio pitched in the same game for the first time on Saturday and struck out eight batters in 3 1⁄3 innings to preserve a 2-1 victory.
On Sunday, Miller struck out two in a perfect eighth and Chapman tossed a 1-2-3 ninth for his third save in his first week as a Yankee. The Yankees improved to 16-20 before a seven-game road trip to Arizona and Oakland.
Masahiro Tanaka, who was coming off his worst start of the season when he allowed six runs (and three home runs) in seven innings to the Royals, was only slightly better. Tanaka gave up four runs and eight hits in five innings with three walks and seven strikeouts.
The Yankees took a 1-0 lead three batters into the first against Miguel Gonzalez when Beltran hit a sacrifice fly to score Jacoby Ellsbury, who had singled in his first at-bat since May 6. Ellsbury had been out with a hip injury before playing two innings of defense on Saturday.
The White Sox tied it in the second when Tanaka inexplicably lost his control. Tanaka had retired the first four batters, two via strikeouts, when he walked two in a row and allowed an RBI single to Garcia. Even though Tanaka struck out the next two batters, it was a struggle for the rest of his 102 pitches.
Adam Eaton led off the third with a home run to make it 2-1. The Yankees retook the lead in the bottom half on an RBI single by Starlin Castro and bases-loaded walk to Dustin Ackley.
But the flip-flopping continued in the fourth when the White Sox made it 4-3 on a run-scoring safety squeeze bunt by Eaton and RBI single by Austin Jackson.
It stayed that way until the sixth, when Beltran hit his milestone home run off Zach Duke to give the Yankees a 5-4 advantage. Beltran, who has eight this season, became the 54th player and fourth switch hitter to reach 400.
Brian McCann gave the Yankees an insurance run in the eighth with his fifth home run.
..... - Newsday