With their playoff seed wrapped up Tuesday night, the Yankees have played four (and will have played five) games in which the results do not matter.
Apart from obligation, the main point of this stretch for the club is to ensure each hitter and pitcher is feeling well at the right time. In that way, perhaps Luis García Jr.’s effort in an otherwise meaningless nightcap of Friday’s doubleheader will matter.
The slugging first baseman/DH, who has been cold for most of the month, put together some of his most encouraging at-bats in the 6-3 win over the Orioles.
In the fourth inning, against righty Brandon Young, García crushed a fastball right back up the middle — 105.3 mph off the bat — right into the glove of shortstop José Barrero, which was “really good to see,” manager Aaron Boone said.
After a sixth-inning walk, García grounded an RBI single up the middle against lefty Grant Wolfram in the seventh.
“He’s such a good hitter that you know it’s going to come around,” Boone said. “Kind of hoping the timing of a little lull here the last 10 days or so is just in time to heat up at the right time.”
Prior to the game, García — who had been so good in August after coming over from the Nationals at the trade deadline — was hitting just .224 with a .579 OPS in his first 18 September games.
Perhaps most notably, he had walked once and struck out 18 times in the span.
“He’s just been kind of mis-hitting some balls where it feels like he’s on time for some for the last week or 10 days,” Boone said Friday. “Where he ends up with the lazy fly ball to the outfield, where he’s just off there a little bit.”
The left-on-left at-bat against Wolfram was particularly encouraging considering the pitchers the Yankees are about to see. García is among the best bats in the game against right-handed pitching (.865 OPS) and often benched against lefties (.653 OPS), and the Red Sox’s staff is loaded with southpaws.
It will be curious to see how Boone deploys García in the wild-card series. If Paul Goldschmidt starts at first base against a lefty and Ben Rice — who has hit lefties better than García — starts at DH, García likely would be a powerful bat off the bench.
Also standing out in the nightcap was Ryan McMahon, who may be making a (very) late argument for October playing time.
After coming through with a double and a single, the third baseman is 4-for-8 with a homer and six RBIs in his past two starts. Previous to this spurt, he had not tallied a multi-hit game in his past 21 tries, a brutal stretch in which he hit .143 with a .387 OPS.
Consider it one more thing for Boone to consider on Tuesday, when he will choose McMahon (mostly for his third base defense), Amed Rosario (for his righty bat), or José Caballero or Anthony Volpe (who are more balanced options) as his starting third baseman against Boston.
Due to the heavy rains and winds expected especially later in the afternoon, Sunday’s regular-season finale with the Orioles was moved up to 1:05 p.m.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
