Yankees.com: Sánchez finally slugs the homer he’s been waiting 6 years to hit

From Bryan Hoch:

For a few seconds, Ali Sánchez said he “felt nothing” as he tracked the flight of his first Major League home run. It was when he began to run, a trot around the bases that the Yankees’ catcher had pictured for his entire life, that he felt everything.

Sánchez’s three-run blast highlighted a late surge as the Yankees rallied for a 9-5 victory over the White Sox on Monday evening at Rate Field. As he rounded the bases, Sánchez said he pictured a younger version of himself, taking similar steps on dusty ballfields back home in Venezuela.

“I thought about it in my mind a lot,” Sánchez said. “You always dream to play in the big leagues. Having your first homer with a Yankees uniform and getting the ‘W,’ it’s special.”

Sánchez proudly displayed the keepsake ball on the top shelf of his locker, already encased in a plastic cube. The trade had come easily; he said he’d signed a few items and posed for photographs with a young fan, leaning into a microphone to emphasize, “Thank you, Santiago.”

Hoch initially centered his article on Ben Rice’s big two-out RBI single that put the Yankees ahead 5-4, but I think it’s probably fair enough to give Sanchez the spotlight. He has been surprisingly big by just being NORMAL bad instead of INSANELY bad like Austin Wells (and JC Escarra before him).

Every game they can win before the trade deadline is extra important, as they will not be able to supplement this offense until then. They are also 14 games over .500, which is pretty damn good.

2024 Yankees… 60-45
2025 Yankees… 60-49
2026 Yankees… 60-46

That is weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeird.

Max Fried had an incredibly frustrating outing. Three runs in three innings, but he both pitched a lot better than that, but also kind of just as bad as that sounds. He didn’t have full command of his pitches, and so he was giving up waaaaaaaaaay too many foul balls. However, he also was dealing with some EXTREMELY bad luck, including the Yankees not challenging a play where a White Sox player was clearly tagged while off of the bag. Why even HAVE video replay guys if they’re missing shit like that? That would have lopped off TWO runs from Fried’s outing.

He also had a scoreless second and third. Fried is a guy who is always going to have ducks on the pond, he just is great at limiting damage. He was on a pitch count, as well, or else he likely goes five innings (maybe even eking out six). I’m not even remotely worried about him.

The offense is still dogshit, but luckily, the White Sox pitching staff is possibly even worse outside their main starters, who are quite good (and the back of their bullpen is pretty good).

Anthony Volpe is pretty plainly outplaying Jose Caballero by every measurement. Defensively, Volpe has amazing stats, offensively, he’s below average, but a lot closer to it than Cabby (91 OPS+ versus 84 OPS+). Heck, even that INSANELY bad popup drop in the ninth (by the way, my apologies on the play. I thought he had his feet set. He did not, so it wasn’t AS bad as I thought it was. It was more a traditional dropped pop up, a la Luis Castillo back in 2009) happened in an inning where Cabby made an error of his own EARLIER in the inning.

Volpe also made a tremendous play on a groundball in the seventh inning, and then followed that up with an amazing relay that nailed the possible tying run at the plate (worst Brent Headrick outing in some time. maybe he’s being overused?). The error meant bringing Bednar in for a one-out save, which sucks, but hey, a win is a win is a win.

Sanchez’s celebration gets the featured image.

And as WP noted, holy shit, the “Condensed games” on MLB.com are getting to be SUPER useless nowadays.

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