Both will stress your heart, and the Yankees did it again, with their bullpen blowing four leads on the way to a 8-6, 11-inning win before 18,477 at Kaufmann Stadium on Monday night. The game went 4 hours and 52 minutes.
DJ LeMahieu’s double provided the (final) go-ahead run. LeMahieu ripped one to right center, bringing in the extra-innings runner Joey Gallo. Two more runs would score when Brett Gardner ripped a grounder up the middle with the bases loaded and it went off the face of shortstop Nicky Lopez. Wandy Perata gave up a meaningless run in the bottom half but protected the win.
It came after each team scored a pair of runs in the 10th inning, and after Zack Britton blew a one-run save try in the ninth.
The win was the Yankees’ sixth of their last seven games. They’re six games back in the AL East are now two games behind the Red Sox for the second AL Wild Card spot. They also improved to 20-11 in one-run games and 7-7 in extras.
The Yankees received another impressive start from Jameson Taillon, who didn’t surrender an earned run over 6 2/3 innings. He came into the night 6-0 with a 2.35 ERA over his previous nine starts, propping up a rotation that lost Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery to the COVID-IL and Domingo German to a strained shoulder.