Alex Rodriguez has 622 home runs. Yesterday, it was a hit that traveled barely 60 feet that made the difference for the Yankees.
Rodriguez’s infield single gave the Yankees the lead in the seventh inning of a 9-3 victory over the Mets, and was the centerpiece of an inning the Yankees have been waiting on for a while.
“We’ve been talking about playing small ball for the last week or two,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t think it could have gotten any smaller.”
The Yankees have been living and dying by the home run this year, with more than 50 percent of their runs coming from the long ball. In the Subway Series, they scored eight of their first nine runs on home runs. The debate has raged whether the team’s reliance on home runs is a detriment in the long term, something that irked manager Joe Girardi before yesterday’s game.
But in the seventh, the Yankees showed they can score without blasting balls into the seats. They hung up eight runs on the Mets in the inning, and five of their six hits were singles — none bigger than Rodriguez’s dribbler toward third base that pushed Francisco Cervelli across home to give the Yankees a 4-3 lead.
“Did we hit the ball hard the whole inning?” asked Mark Teixeira, who was intentionally walked to load the bases just before Rodriguez. “We just found holes the whole inning. Sometimes in baseball that’s all you need.”
Mets starter Mike Pelfrey had a 3-1 lead entering the inning, but stumbled against the bottom of the Yankees’ lineup. Brett Gardner got things started with a single, then Chris Dickerson walked. Pelfrey hit Cervelli with a pitch to load the bases. Derek Jeter’s single up the middle and past a diving Jose Reyes tied the game, 3-3.
Curtis Granderson put down a sacrifice bunt to move the go-ahead run to third. When Mets manger Terry Collins opted to walk Teixeira, bringing Rodriguez up. It’s a formula that has not worked. Rodriguez is now 6-for-8 with 19 RBIs in plate appearances after an intentional pass to Teixeira.
This time, it was not a dramatic grand slam or a bat-rattling double — just a slow roller Willie Harris could not get to.
“I showed them, didn’t I?” Rodriguez joked.
The Yankees continued to pile on, sending 13 men to the plate in the inning before it was over. The eight runs were the most they’ve scored in an inning since Aug. 19, 2010, against the Tigers. After going 4-for-33 with runners in scoring position during their previous five home games, they went 5-for-7 with RISP in the inning.
“We had a lot of big hits that inning,” Jeter said. “A lot of times it’s not how hard you hit them, it’s where you hit them. We were fortunate. We had a lot of balls that fell in for us. Sometimes things are contagious. It seems like it was that inning.”