NEW YORK – David Bednar looked gassed in a ninth inning that seemed primed for disaster on Monday night, one run already home and two more Blue Jays dancing off the bases. George Springer waited with a bat in hand, ready to add to a collection of ruined pinstriped evenings.
“It’s not gonna happen again,” Bednar said to himself.
Those five words preceded three hellacious splitters, the last of which dived under Springer’s bat. A crowd that had groaned found reason to believe again, and when Bednar induced a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. groundout six pitches later, the Yankees’ closer had sealed a 7-6 victory at Yankee Stadium that was anything but clean.
“Just find a way,” Bednar said. “There’s a way out of every situation. I think it really just comes down to executing one pitch at a time and really slowing it all down. As simple as it sounds, it’s a lot harder to do.”
One day and one bridge ago, Bednar hung a curveball to the Mets’ Tyrone Taylor, surrendering a three-run homer in a gut-punch loss at Citi Field. Yankees manager Aaron Boone felt no need to console Bednar, noting, “We’ve got a lot of grownups in that room.”
Such is the life of a closer; there was a belief that he’d shake it off quickly.
For the most part, Bednar did. Though he said his Sunday evening was “incredibly frustrating,” the 31-year-old arrived in the Bronx on Monday ready for another opportunity.
His arm didn’t feel fresh, not after throwing 44 pitches over the previous three days, but that’s nothing new. Bednar’s bulldog, give-me-the-ball mentality has endeared him to teammates.
“He’s our guy,” Cody Bellinger said. “Full confidence in him. I’ve faced him so many times. It’s a really tough at-bat.”
So the phone rang in the ninth inning, after Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm Jr. belted a pair of two-run homers in the seventh and Fernando Cruz pitched a scoreless eighth. The stadium lights flickered, with the strains of Styx’s “Renegade” blasting – and Bednar lost Ernie Clement to a seven-pitch walk.
Jesús Sánchez came off the bench to pinch-hit, chopping a splitter over first baseman Ben Rice and down the left-field line, chasing home Clement. Less than two weeks after Boone lauded his bullpen, saying on May 5 they might be “just better than everyone thinks,” leaks have sprung left and right.
A strikeout and a walk followed before Bednar had to tackle Springer; two splitters and a four-seamer missed the zone. With the count 3-0, Springer was sitting on a fastball; everyone in the ballpark probably expected it, including Boone, who acknowledged as much from his dugout perch.
“I’m certain on the 3-0 pitch he thought he was getting a heater,” Boone said, “as did I.”
Instead, another splitter. Swing and a miss.
“When he threw that, we were all like, ‘Yeah, that’s how we’re feeling tonight,’” Chisholm said. “That was fire. Especially in a situation like that, that could load the bases? That takes some guts.”
Then another. Swing and a miss. If Springer expected something else on 3-2, he never got it.
“Man, that was awesome,” starter Ryan Weathers said. “He got 3-0 on Springer and just sacked up and threw three straight splits on the bottom of the plate.”
Bednar’s 36th and final pitch of the night was – what else? – a splitter, one Guerrero chopped to Chisholm at second base. Bednar said it “wasn’t pretty,” but it was sorely needed, especially coming off what Boone had described as a “terrible” 2-7 road trip through Milwaukee, Baltimore and Queens.
Seeing the defending American League champions for the first time this year, the Yankees are also hungry to rewrite a narrative after struggling head-to-head against Toronto in 2025. Both teams finished with 94 wins, leaving a tiebreaker to determine the AL East crown.
Toronto won eight of their 13 meetings, then continued that dominance by sending New York home after a four-game AL Division Series. The Yankees wholeheartedly believe the story should have ended differently, part of the reason they were so enthusiastic about a “run it back” campaign.
“Losing to them in the playoffs, we have a different mindset when it comes to them,” Chisholm said. “I know a couple of other guys in the clubhouse have that feeling of, like, ‘We owe you something, and we’re going to show you what we’ve got.’”
Different words, but the same sentiment of Bednar’s 24-hour flip from hanging curveball to high-wire hero: “It’s not gonna happen again.”
“It’s digging deep, getting a little gritty,” Bednar said, “and finding a way.”