From Bryan Hoch:
The chants spilled from the grandstands late Wednesday night, after Juan Soto had sliced his second home run of the game into the left-field seats at Yankee Stadium. Hearing the syllables of his name interspersed with proclamations of “M-V-P!,” the Yankees superstar turned toward the wall and raised both hands high.
These first months in pinstripes have been a dream for Soto, and the key ingredient has been blocking out noise. No matter who is talking about what his contract and future could look like — a daily conversation in the city at this point — Soto has been able to focus on delivering results.
“It’s unbelievable,” Soto said after his second multihomer game as a Yankee, helping to power a 7-3 victory over the Mariners. “All I’ve got to do is turn around and they go crazy. I know it’s a lot of Dominicans; they all want me to say hi. I try to say hi to everybody, but I’ve got to be focused on the game, too.”
As good as Soto has been, and as good as he was in this specific game, I think I still have to give the featured image to Nestor, who battled through five innings to allow no runs. This Yankee rotation has now had something like eleven straight good pitching performance (eight REALLY good pitching performances before Schmidt and Nestor’s recent five-inning outings). It’s amazing to watch. The featured image is a nice look at a first inning Cortes strikeout of J-Rod.
Today, Michael Tonkin struggled a bit (and with Ian Hamilton returning soon, Tonkin is probably about to be DFAed for his…fourth time this season? Maybe just the third time) in the eighth, inexplicably walking two guys up five runs, and Luke Weaver was forced to be used, and he promptly gave up a three-run home run to make this a close game, but then the Yankees surprisingly added on runs in the bottom of the eighth with a Verdugo home run, and it was all good.
With the Orioles’ pair of losses, the Yankees are now finally ahead of Baltimore in the loss column, and up three games overall. Considering the Orioles are playing .617 baseball this season, that’s truly remarkable.
It would be nice for the Yankees to avoid losing this series this afternoon, before heading to the West Coast (I believe the Yankees avoid Mike King in the Padres series, which is nice. I hate seeing the Yankees do poorly against their former players).