When Yankees might want to abandon all-out AL East push…
It was a game the Yankees deemed that they had to have, in order that they had been going to do no matter they might to run it down.
Down 2-0 in Minnesota in the seventh inning on Wednesday, Aaron Boone tapped the fuel pedal. With runners on second and third in a game that was a swing away from getting out of attain, he introduced in Brent Headrick for the 77th time this season, which trails only Toronto’s Mason Fluharty for most appearances in the majors. Headrick escaped — and then returned to the mound for the eighth, now up to 75 ⅔ innings on the yr.
That effort appeared to repay in the ninth, when Anthony Volpe’s two-run double tied it, and led to more burn on the Yankees tires: Boone went to Paul Blackburn (81 ⅔ innings and counting in his first full season as a reliever) for a scoreless backside of the ninth, and then David Bednar (66 ⅓ innings, plus another 4 pressure-packed frames during the World Baseball Classic) for the tenth — and, as neither team might separate itself, the eleventh, too. So with less than two weeks before the start of the postseason, Bednar added 26 more pitches to his odometer.
Boone’s administration was comprehensible: The Yankees try to preserve tempo with the Rays and might converse from experience how vital successful the division and clinching the first-round bye might be.
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