Tomorrow will be a week since both Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo made their New York Yankees debuts and we can already consider the blockbuster moves by general manager Brian Cashman a success.
Rizzo has been the talk of the town, but what about Joey?! When was his moment going to come?
Thursday night, in fact! Not everybody can get off to a scorching start in a new setting. Gallo needed a minute to get acclimated to the Big Apple.
In the seventh inning against the Seattle Mariners, the Yankees trailed 3-2. And the topic of discussion overshadowing the team’s recent promising run of form was the decision to option Greg Allen in favor of Jonathan Davis.
But we won’t get into that. Let’s be happy, shall we?
With two outs, Aaron Judge ripped a single. Then Giancarlo Stanton followed suit with one of his own. Then came Gallo for a molto bene signature Yankee moment.
Joey Gallo’s short porch home run gave the Yankees the lead.
His first homer as a Yankee comes in pinstripes and it gave the team a late lead against their main competitors in the wild card race at the moment.
To think this team was devoid of capable lefty power hitters for nearly two years is … insane. Gallo’s light-tower power is the EXACT reason you invest in players who can take advantage of the short porch. We don’t even want to know the horrific statcast numbers on that three-run shot. It happened. We have the lead. Gallo got a curtain call. Let’s end it there.
And John Sterling’s call?! You surely have to listen to that.
Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman made it difficult in the eighth and ninth innings, of course, but the Yankees came out on top in the 5-3 victory to capture the first game of the series.
New York has won 8 of 10. The Red Sox have lost 7 of 9. Boston’s AL East lead is down to five games.
It’s almost like one team is hitting its stride and the other is regressing to the mean? Guess we’ll find out over the next two months. That’s plenty of time for Gallo to destroy more homers.
Yankees: Joey Gallo’s first move with NYY is karmic payback to A-Rod
New York Yankees slugger Joey Gallo's first move with the team is extremely karmic retribution for Alex Rodriguez's recent comments.