{"id":196271,"date":"2025-09-03T07:44:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T07:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/196271\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T07:44:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T07:44:06","slug":"yankees-critical-september-stretch-begins-with-a-victory-at-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/196271\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees’ critical September stretch begins with a victory at Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOUSTON \u2013 Belief in the 2025 Yankees as an October threat starts with this 12-game stretch against the Astros<\/a>, Blue Jays, Tigers and the dreaded Red Sox<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the guys we\u2019re probably going to play in the playoffs, and this is what we\u2019ve got to do,\u2019\u2019 Jazz Chisholm Jr. said after Tuesday night\u2019s 7-1 Yankees\u2019 win against Houston.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to go out and dominate, early often and consistently.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

This is the authenticity check on the Yankees\u2019 ability to repeat as league champs; four straight series versus current AL playoff teams with a combined 19-7 record against the Yanks this year.<\/p>\n

Well, make that 19-8, after Trent Grisham\u2019s latest grand slam and two more homers by Chisholm \u2013 along with Max Fried\u2019s pitching and defense \u2013 lifted the Yanks to their eighth win in nine games.<\/p>\n

From a wider view, manager Aaron Boone\u2019s club has won 15 of their last 20 games, but three losses to Boston stand out most.<\/p>\n

Entering Wednesday, the Yankees remain tied for the top AL wild card spot with Boston, and both clubs trailing the AL East-leading Blue Jays by 2.5 games.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, we\u2019re playing for a lot, and you want to be in those situations come September\u2026with an opportunity to play in October for everything,\u2019\u2019 Boone said before Tuesday\u2019s opener.<\/p>\n

That requires meeting the challenge of this four-series stretch, and sustaining the momentum built largely by bludgeoning baseball\u2019s junior varsity.<\/p>\n

Max Fried comes through on the mound, in the field<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to come out and start the series off right,\u2019\u2019 said Fried, who yielded just one run across seven innings and made two sensational plays to defuse potential rallies.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s one of my favorites,\u2019\u2019 said Grisham, a fellow Gold Glove Award winner. \u201cI love watching the ease he gets to certain plays and he\u2019s got a cannon.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Runners were at first and second, none out, when Fried reacted quickly to Jeremy Pena\u2019s sac bunt attempt and got the force play at third base.<\/p>\n

In the seventh, same situation, Fried turned Cesar Salazar\u2019s bunt into a double play with a sliding catch and peg to first base.<\/p>\n

Mostly, Fried thoroughly outdueled fellow lefty Framber Valdez, who surrendered Chisholm\u2019s second inning two-run homer and Grisham\u2019s fifth-inning grand slam to make it 6-0.<\/p>\n

Grisham talked about getting \u201creally calm\u2019\u2019 and ultra focused in the on-deck circle prior to belting his third grand slam of the year, and his second within the week.<\/p>\n

Once again, the Yanks stepped up against Valez, who has yielded 10 runs in 10.2 innings against the Yankees, while posting a 3.05 ERA in his other starts.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Fried has posted a 0.90 ERA over his last three starts, after pitching to a 6.80 ERA in eight starts following a blister issue that interrupted an All-Star first half.<\/p>\n

Fried was admittedly under the weather Tuesday, saying he dealt with nausea during his start – yet still lowered his seasonal ERA to 2.98, putting him squarely in the AL Cy Young Award conversation.<\/p>\n

Yankees’ road to victory at Houston<\/p>\n

Before the game, Boone recognized that “some of the usual suspects we know that have terrorized us over the years” pose a threat.<\/p>\n

And then the Yanks’ pitching combined to limit Jose Altuve, Jeremy Pena and Carlos Correa to a 1-for-11 night, with three strikeouts and zero RBI.<\/p>\n

“It feels great,” Chisholm said of the win, as he personally approaches a 30-30 (homer-steals) season.<\/p>\n

“Impressive. He’s an impressive player,” said Grisham, having an equally impressive season in his free agent walk year, now with 29 homers to Chisholm’s 28.<\/p>\n

Other than Jose Caballero getting tossed out of another game within two weeks, with an ill-timed, hot-tempered argument, the Yanks couldn’t have asked for a better start to a critical stretch.<\/p>\n

What a start to a spellbinding September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 Belief in the 2025 Yankees as an October threat starts with this 12-game stretch against the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":196272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[7951,591,1540,2731,1281,109125,109127,3189,12102,1449,1885,1074,32141,80442,11315,36482,1075,24255,80441,316,4345,2382,56484,80448,34552,20420,27065,635,2228,50,5228,450,1457,80449,1451,12100,5855,109126,3190,25225,62,1458,358,2971,8790,1290,1526,52282,3187,67335,2386,636],"class_list":{"0":"post-196271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-blue","11":"tag-boston","12":"tag-boston-red-sox","13":"tag-cesar","14":"tag-cesar-salazar","15":"tag-content","16":"tag-content-sharing-ny-pro-sports","17":"tag-detroit","18":"tag-detroit-tigers","19":"tag-exclude","20":"tag-exclude-from-home-front","21":"tag-framber","22":"tag-framber-valdez","23":"tag-fried","24":"tag-from","25":"tag-front","26":"tag-grisham","27":"tag-home","28":"tag-houston","29":"tag-houston-astros","30":"tag-jays","31":"tag-jeremy","32":"tag-jeremy-pena","33":"tag-max","34":"tag-max-fried","35":"tag-new","36":"tag-new-york-yankees","37":"tag-news","38":"tag-ny","39":"tag-overall","40":"tag-overall-positive","41":"tag-pena","42":"tag-positive","43":"tag-pro","44":"tag-red","45":"tag-salazar","46":"tag-sharing","47":"tag-sox","48":"tag-sports","49":"tag-sports-news","50":"tag-texas","51":"tag-tigers","52":"tag-toronto","53":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","54":"tag-trent","55":"tag-trent-grisham","56":"tag-tx","57":"tag-valdez","58":"tag-yankees","59":"tag-york"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}