BALTIMORE – Brent Headrick stood near the back of the mound, hands on his hips, as all of Camden Yards waited for a verdict. Pete Alonso had gone into full Carlton Fisk mode, hopping down the first-base line, expecting his towering seventh-inning drive to light up the scoreboard as a go-ahead home run.
Instead, the initial call was a foul ball. Alonso raised both hands to his helmet and howled, then did so again when replay angles proved inconclusive. Headrick told himself to bear down and focus on getting the out. He did, striking out Alonso swinging.
“I’m a pitcher, right?” Headrick said after the Yankees’ 5-3 victory over the Orioles on Wednesday night. “So from my vantage point, I thought it was foul. But yeah, I think it could have gone either way. It went in our favor.”
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he didn’t believe his team caught a break. While it was initially unsure, replay coordinator Brett Weber walked to the third-base line after the game to plot the path of Alonso’s drive. The conclusion: The initial call was correct, a foul ball.
“It’s a long strike,” Jazz Chisholm Jr. said. “That’s what we all talk about. If they all counted, we’d have a lot of home runs – everybody in the world.”
Understandably, Alonso and his teammates saw it differently. Then the Yankees took advantage: George Lombard Jr. legged out a bases-loaded infield single, and Chisholm raced home with another run on a wild pitch, sparking New York’s third straight win.
“They executed and they beared down, and they got it done. We didn’t,” Alonso said. “Obviously, that’s a really defining call in the game. But when adversity is faced, you’ve got to push past it and move through it.”
In the eighth, Cam Sanders plunked two Yankees and issued a walk, setting up Lombard’s slow roller up the third-base line facing Yennier Cano.
That swing might not have been a screamer, but Lombard has been stacking quality at-bats, improving to 4-for-7 with two RBIs in this series. Lombard has consecutive multi-hit games for the first time in his brief career.
“You want to be the guy who can put the team in front or help the team find a way to win,” Lombard said.
Chisholm appeared to limp after diving back to third base, but there was nothing tentative about what happened next. When Cano bounced a splitter, Chisholm broke immediately, sliding home safely head-first.
“We call that the rope-a-dope,” Boone said. “He was flying. How instinctive a baserunner Jazz is, I don’t think he always gets credit for.”
Ben Rice hit his team-leading 34th home run – a Statcast-projected 447-foot blast that cleared the seating area beneath the scoreboard. Boone called it “a big boy blow.”
“That was a bomb. That was sick,” Chisholm said. “I’ve never seen a ball hit there in person. Actually, I haven’t even seen one hit there in a highlight.”
Ryan McMahon contributed a run-scoring single earlier in the contest, though he was thrown out at second base, jamming his left thumb against the bag. X-rays were negative.
“I’d like to think I have a pretty high pain tolerance, so hopefully it’s just kind of whatever I can handle and I can get back in there pretty soon,” McMahon said.
The early runs supported Will Warren, who worked four innings of two-run ball before turning the game over to the bullpen.
“I think I did a great job of competing, trying to keep us in the game,” Warren said. “They had multiple chances to put [runs] up, and we got out of it.”
Alonso hit a third-inning homer off Warren, and Dylan Beavers hit a sixth-inning homer off Fernando Cruz that tied the score.
Thanks in part to the Alonso homer-that-wasn’t, Beavers’ blast was the only blemish against the Yankees’ bullpen, which combined for five innings of one-run, three-hit relief.
“It’s simple; we just want to pick up our guys, before and after,” Headrick said. “We go out there and just try to compete as best we can, no matter what the situation is. When our name is called, we want it just as bad as the next guy.”
Over the past nine games, New York’s relievers have a 1.38 ERA (five earned runs in 32 2/3 innings).
“They’re the best in the league for a reason,” Warren said. “I think any one of those guys, you can hand the ball off to, and they’re going to get the job done."