The Pinstriped Baseball Lane

The Yankees got their first series win of 2020 today. That’s right, you read those words in the previous sentence correctly, and it was a down-to-the wire type of match too. I hate to say it, but Patrick Corbin gave the New York Yankees a run for their money in this afternoon’s game, but in the end the Bronx Squad buckled down and captured their first series W of the season.

The Yanks did what they had to do to ensure that they claimed the rubber match this afternoon in Washington. Their victory came by a 3-2 win over the Nats.

The teams had split the first two matchups, the Yankees taking a rain-shortened Opening Day clash and the Nationals responding with a 9-2 victory Saturday. Today’s match was one of those nail biters, and I know I was one of the fans that was nervous wreck that was thinking the Yankees would lose their first series of the year. Although that was the case for me, I still followed the game until the very end.

The Yankee bats got off to a slow start, but they eventually got into the swing of things. This game is a perfect example of why no opposing team should sleep on the Yankees. They were struggling for a while, but then the seventh inning showed up and the Bronx Bombers Squad stroke back.

In the space of three batters, the Yanks managed to flip the game completely over on its head.

Gleyber Torres went yard on Patrick Corbin in the seventh inning, which led Nationals manager Dave Martinez to turn things over to the bullpen. Will Harris struck out Giancarlo Stanton and then watched Luke Voit tie the game on a solo home run to left.

Following his teammates, Torres plated the go-ahead run in the eighth with a single to left.

The Yankees had the bases loaded with two outs after Tanner Rainey committed a balk and walked Stanton. Voit struck out swinging before New York could add to its lead, but the damage had already been done. From here on out, it could go down in the baseball records that the Nats wasted a gem pitched by Corbin.

As Jon Sterling would say, “It’s Gleyber Day!” and today there was certainly a celebration of sorts on the Yankees’ end in Nationals’ Park. You could say that Torres got to celebrate an anniversary in today’s game, because he managed to acknowledge the four years that have passed since his trade to the Yankees. In my opinion, making the trade for him was one of the best moves the Yanks have ever made. As a matter of fact, the Yankee shortstop describes the 2016 swap as, “…one of the best things that has happened to me…”

With the Yankees and Gleyber’s performance in the seventh inning, Corbin’s stellar start didn’t matter in the end. All that matters is, the 60 game sprint to a the 2020 World Series has start off pretty well for my pinstriped baseball team.