Andrew Benintendi has his Yankee Stadium moment
Yankees leftfielder Andrew Benintendi (18) rounds the bases after hitting a two-run home run against the Toronto Blue Jays in the seventh inning at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, August 21, 2022. Credit: Noah K. Murray
New York can be a tough town and Yankee Stadium can be an unforgiving place.
Just ask Hal Steinbrenner, who was booed twice during the otherwise joyful Paul O’Neill number retirement ceremony on Sunday at Yankee Stadium.
Oddly, Andrew Benintendi had mostly escaped the wrath of increasingly dissatisfied Yankees fans during the team’s recent struggles. Benintendi went into Sunday batting .192 in 22 games since the Yankees acquired him from Kansas City last month. He is wearing Johnny Damon's No. 18, but he was looking more like the second coming of Jacoby Ellsbury. But it was mostly under-the-radar.
So it’s not accurate to say Benintendi turned the boos to cheers when he hit a dramatic, tiebreaking two-run home run in the seventh inning to lead the Yankees to a much-needed 4-2 victory over the Blue Jays.
It was Benintendi’s first home run as a Yankee — he had gone 50 games without one — and helped keep the team from suffering a four-game sweep.
“You definitely never want to get swept,” Benintendi said. “To win this last one was big. Hopefully this can kick-start a little streak here. Obviously, it’s not ideal, but we’re still in a great spot.”
Eight games up in the AL East is a great spot. But the way the Yankees have been playing for a long stretch — poorly — this game felt like a bigger deal than a one-off against one of the teams pursuing them in the division.
It felt like a game the Yankees had to have, especially going into a Subway Series in which they will face Max Scherzer and might face Jacob deGrom.
Aaron Boone, who pounded a table in anger on Saturday, called “Benny’s” home run “one of those moments.”
Of course, the Yankees thought they had one of those moments on Wednesday with Josh Donaldson’s walk-off grand slam against Tampa Bay, which erased a three-run deficit in the 10th inning . And then they lost three in a row to Toronto.
Boone has been trying different lineup combinations, and on Sunday he settled on Benintendi in the leadoff spot with DJ LeMahieu cleanup. LeMahieu had two singles and drove in a run (the Yankees’ first run scored on a throwing error on LeMahieu’s first hit).
Benintendi hit a booming double to right-center in the fifth off Toronto starter Alex Manoah, after which Manoah hit Aaron Judge in the arm with a pitch.
Judge got ticked off, the benches almost emptied, Gerrit Cole was irate, and the 6-7, 282-pound Judge and the 6-6, 260-pound Manoah eventually came together in a peacemaking moment that defused the tension.
Some people are going to want you to believe that Judge getting hit is what sparked the Yankees. Or Boone pounding a table. Or O’Neill and the other Yankees champions from the past showing up to honor “The Warrior.”
Don’t believe any of that. The Yankees won on Sunday because they pitched well (Nestor Cortes and Lou Trivino, especially) and got the big blow they desperately needed from Benintendi.
The Blue Jays had tied the score at 2 on a bases-loaded walk in the seventh. Trivino came on and got Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to ground out to shortstop Oswaldo Cabrera to end the inning. The rookie booted the ball before gathering himself and throwing out Guerrero by a surprising margin — until you realized that Guerrero wasn’t running hard.
Jose Trevino opened the bottom of the inning by beating out a swinging bunt to third. He was sacrificed to second by Marwin Gonzalez, which seemed like a good strategy, given that Benintendi is more likely to hit a single than a home run and Gonzalez was hitless in his previous 32 plate appearances.
“Trevi started the inning off, showing off his wheels, and then Marwin getting a good bunt down,” Benintendi said. “Put those two things together and things tend to go well.”
Benintendi then lined his home run into the second deck in right, just inside the foul pole. It was bedlam in the Bronx.
“I put a good swing on it,” Benintendi said. “The start here hasn’t been great personally. A lot worse, obviously, than I want it to be. But I think that’s a couple things: trying too hard and things like that . . . Today was obviously a good day for the team, so go on to [Monday].”
Monday means facing Scherzer and the Mets in the Bronx, weather permitting. The place will be packed and the stakes will be high. As it should be in this tough a town.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
