Yankees 9, Brave 6: Big bats outlast sloppy baseball

Both sides played pretty sloppy baseball on Tuesday night, but the Yankees ended up outlasting their NL East opponent, taking game one against the Braves 9-6. Jordan Montgomery recorded his second win of the season, and the team kicked off their nine-game homestand with a nice offensive breakout.

We’d talked a lot about how annoying the past week has been for the Yankees, especially that four-game set at Tropicana Field, where it felt like almost every offensive opportunity was squandered. The Yankees weren’t interested in a repeat, coming out of the gate hard and putting up runs in bunches.

Luke Voit kicked us off early, after DJ LeMahieu singled and Aaron Hicks reached on an error. The big first baseman clubbed a ball into the left field seats to give the Yankees a 3-0 lead after one. Voit would continue his contributions at the plate with the bases loaded in the third:

I’m not sure what to call this – it’s technically an RBI and a fielder’s choice, but I really like the idea of it being a lineout sacrifice fly. Alas. A batter later, Mike Ford drove in two more with a ball over the head of Marcell Ozuna. It was scored a double but sure didn’t look like Ozuna put max effort into the play. The Yankees were up six after three innings.

Two innings later, Aaron Judge retook the lead in the MLB home run race:

Jordan Montgomery rebounded nicely after a poor start last week, at one point retiring ten Braves in a row. He came under pressure in the third inning after walking Tyler Flowers, and a ground ball to third base resulted in no outs. Gio Urshela fielded the ball, but DJ failed to cover second, and Gio acted too late to make a play to first. Everyone was safe, and a wild pitch moved men to the corners with nobody out.

To Gumby’s credit, he didn’t waver, getting a popup, strikeout and groundout to get out of the inning without giving up a run. He cruised through the next two innings before he clearly began to run out of gas. The ball began creeping up in the zone, there was more traffic, and Ozuna made up for his play in right by cranking a three-run homer that was the only blemish on Monty’s night.

If you were to rank the order of Yankee relievers, Luis Cessa and David Hale would likely be at the very bottom, and they showed why tonight. Hale allowed traffic after relieving Monty, and needed to be rescued by Adam Ottavino, who did allow one of his baserunners to score on an error. Luis Cessa took over in the eighth and immediately allowed an RBI double after a fielding error from the other middle infielder, Gleyber Torres.

But, let’s not forget that even with fielding errors, Luis Cessa is still bad, as he gave up a second double necessitating the use of Chad Green in what was then only a three-run game. Fortunately, Green is still excellent, and was able to get the game to the ninth where Zack Britton locked up the save.

Ford, to his credit would continue to justify Aaron Boone starting him at DH over the just-called-up Clint Frazier by adding another RBI double in the seventh. That was the ninth and final run the Yankees scored, enough to keep them abreast of a very resilient Braves offense, that came into the game down arguably their best player.

Masahiro Tanaka will get the start in the Bronx tomorrow for game two of this series, with first pitch at 7:05 pm ET.

Box Score.