New day, new clutch hero: Rice propels Yanks to third straight late comeback

WASHINGTON – Let’s just call them the comeback kids from the Bronx.

For the third game in a row, the Yankees took advantage of a big swing late to stun the Nationals. This time it was Ben Rice.

Rice cranked a two-out triple off the wall in left-center field to score two in the eighth inning, lifting the Yankees to their seventh sweep of the season in a 5-3 win at Nationals Park.

The slugger, playing first base for the first time this series, has reached base a season-high 12 games in a row after his third triple this season. The triple was scorched at 100.8 mph for a Statcast-projected 383 feet, to extend Rice's hitting streak to eight games.

Even with all of that, Rice still did not think he got all of it.

"No, I didn't think I got it quite right. But I saw it kept going, so I think wind must have been helping it just enough to make it tough wall ball play there,” Rice said. “I was happy that it didn't get caught."

Nationals center fielder Dylan Crews collided with the wall as the ball rolled away from left fielder Daylen Lile. Max Schuemann and Trent Grisham scored as the Yankees came back to take the lead after trailing 3-2, marking their 24th comeback win of the season and fourth in a row. The Bombers trailed after seven innings in each of the three games in the series.

"That's the mentality we got to have,” Rice said. “We go down in those later innings just knowing that we still got some at-bats left. That's the kind of mentality we need to carry in after the break."

The Yankees finished the first half at 54-42 in defeating the Nationals for the sixth consecutive time. They have won four in a row and five of their past seven.

"There's going to be highs and lows,” manager Aaron Boone said. “There's going to be adverse times. We feel like our first real taste of adversity [was] in that 10-game stretch where I think we went 1-9 [from June 25-July 5]. To go onto a road trip and finish this one off 5-2 – kind of staring at that adversity – is a good response.

“Again, that's all it is. We are in July. We got a long ways to go in this. We've put ourselves in position to have a really special season. That's all [it is] at this point."

Nationals slugger James Wood led off with a home run for the second game in a row and a team-record 10th time this season. He got a hold of Yankees starter Will Warren's 94.6 mph fastball and hit it a Statcast-projected 434 feet to center field for his 28th of the season. Warren brushed off the early homer to complete five innings, allowing one run on four hits.

"I am going to go out there and go as deep as I can,” Warren said. “At the end of the day, I have confidence in what I do over the plate.

“Wood's a good player. [I] saw him hit it yesterday. You get punched in the mouth, you got to stay in the fight. So keep attacking, again trusting our stuff in the zone and just finding a way to get as deep as we can into the game."

The Yankees erased that deficit with RBI singles by Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Austin Wells to go up 2-1 in the fifth inning.

Pinch-hitter Curtis Mead crushed a Tim Hill sinker over the center-field wall to even the score at 2-2 in the sixth. It was the third homer Hill has allowed in the series and fourth this month.

Paul Blackburn threw two scoreless innings to close it out for his first save.