SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
The surging Bronx Bombers have brought their bats 3,000 miles away, but they won’t have that much time to reload after powering past the American League’s top-seeded Tampa Bay Rays, 9-3, Monday night in the league’s division series game one played at Petco Park in San Diego.
The two Eastern Division rivals have had some nasty times this season, as well as times before this, with hit batters, ejections, brawls, plus they are sharing the same resort hotel in the area. In addition, these playoffs are now scheduled as a game a day (or night), so back to the field they return tonight in the best-of-five that will advance the winner to the league’s best-of-seven championship series.
With all this, the same New York club that finished five games behind Tampa Bay in the restarted shortened season playoffs, has been clouting the ball with the return of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, the one-two punch with the booming bats. In their 2-0 wild card sweep over the higher-seeded Indians in the best-of-three in Cleveland, the Yankees pieced together 10 and 9 runs on the strength of the long ball and contributions up and down the lineup.
So with Stanton’s grand slam home run to straight away centerfield on a 2-2 pitch from John Curtiss with one out in the top of the ninth, the Bronx Bombers became became the first American League history to hit a grand slam in back-to-back playoff games, which Gio Urshela did in game two versus Cleveland. The club also set a franchise record by hitting home runs in three-straight postseason games, something the Rays did in four straight in 2008.
Stanton’s shot was the fourth of the contest for New York. Kyle Higashioka and Judge hit the tying and go-ahead home runs off of Tampa Bay starting southpaw Blake Snell in the fifth frame. In the third, Clint Frazier hit an impressive shot, a solo into the second deck to left.
The ball was flying for the Rays, too, against Yankee ace, right-hander, Gerrit Cole, in downtown San Diego. Randy Arozarena homered with two down in the opening inning, and Ji-Man Choi muscled an opposite field, 2-run homer with no out in the fourth to bring Tampa Bay a 3-2 lead that didn’t last long once the Yankees began reaching the outfield seats.
In the other American League division series played at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, the Houston Astros came from behind to take game one over the Oakland Athletics, 10-5. Outfielder George Springer, Most Valuable Player of the 2017 World Series, came up with four hits for Houston, which trailed 3-0 and 5-3.
But the Astros rallied with two outs in sixth against Oakland’s vaunted bullpen to take control of MLB’s first neutral-site postseason game resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Houston pounded out 16 hits in all as the A’s ran through eight pitchers.
Said Springer: “As the game got deeper, the at-bats got better.”
The National League division series plays game one today, in the afternoon the Miami Marlins against the Atlanta Braves at Houston’s Minute Maid Park, and at night, the San Diego Padres versus division rival Los Angeles Dodgers at Globe Life Field, the Texas Rangers’ home field in Arlington, Tex.
