Clarke Schmidt effective again, Yankees get 13 hits in win over White Sox

 CHICAGO — It was one night of offensive bliss, one single night. 

But the kind sorely lacking in quantity for the Yankees during this disappointing season.

With Clarke Schmidt again borderline dominant Tuesday, and Michael King throwing filth in relief, the Yankees banged out 13 hits in bouncing back from Monday's bad loss to beat the White Sox, 7-1, in front of 26,446 at Guaranteed Rate Field. 

“I think it was just a matter of time,” said Harrison Bader, who went 3-for-5 with two runs.

The Yankees (59-55), who sent 10 to the plate in a four-run fourth and tacked on three more in the eighth on Kyle Higashioka’s pinch-hit two-run homer and Aaron Judge’s 21st blast shortly thereafter, pulled within 4 ½ games of the Blue Jays for the AL's third wild-card spot.

The teams totaled 30 strikeouts in a game that wasn’t always pretty, with Yankees hitters striking out 17 times.

Still, after stranding a combined 28 runners the previous two games — and 10 more Tuesday — that bulky total could be put on a backburner.

“It was a number we talked about before the game,” Bader said of the 28 stranded, then invoking the new hitting coach, Sean Casey. “We talked about it as a group and Casey made a good point about it: It’s actually a positive. We’ve got a lot of traffic. It was really just a matter of time.”

Schmidt (8-6, 4.23 ERA) allowed one run — on Luis Robert Jr.’s 31st homer of the season to lead off the fourth — and four hits in 5 1/3 innings in which he walked one and struck out seven. Coming into the game, Schmidt was 6-2 with a 3.23 ERA over his previous 14 starts, that upward trend very much continuing.

“We had a really good game plan going into it,” said Schmidt, whose slider has been one of his better pitches in his recent string of success but who relied more on his curveball Tuesday. “We kept them off-balance, going inside a lot on the righties and then being able to go down and away and getting them to expand a lot.”

After Schmidt departed with two on and one out in the sixth, King struck out the first four batters he faced en route to allowing two hits and striking out five in 2 2/3 scoreless innings.

“Kinger’s had a good year, but that might be as good as he’s looked all year,” Aaron Boone said.

Jonathan Loaisiga, activated Monday and making his return to a big-league mound after missing 106 games because of surgery to remove a bone spur in his right elbow, struck out one in a 1-2-3 ninth. Loaisiga, whose first pitch darted into the strike zone at 97 mph, hit 99 soon after, an encouraging sign for the bullpen that, while overall effective this season, still could use a late-season boost.

“I mean, Game 1 he’s absolutely electric,” King said of Loaisiga.

The Yankees' offense took control in the fourth.    

Giancarlo Stanton flared a one-out single to center and Billy McKinney, in a 4-for-29 skid, lined a single to right. Isiah Kiner-Falefa, 14-for-48 (.292) with runners in scoring position this season, lasered a two-run double into the gap in left-center to make it 2-0. Bader singled down the rightfield line to make it 3-0.

Anthony Volpe and Ben Rortvedt walked back-to-back to load the bases and Jake Bauers just missed a grand slam, settling for a long sacrifice fly to the base of the wall in center that made it 4-0.

But the hit of the night belonged to Kiner-Falefa, whose double allowed the dugout to breathe a sigh of relief after so much recent failure.

“It felt good to just break the ice right there and just kind of start things off,” said Kiner-Falefa, who pinch hit with the bases loaded and one out the night before and failed to drive in a run in the 5-1 loss. “I was more mad at myself from the night before. I feel like those are opportunities I thrive in and wasn’t able to get the job done. For me, it was getting another opportunity with guys on, and I was ready for the opportunity this time.”