YANKEES PAD LEAD ATOP AL EAST WITH SERIES VICTORY IN POTENTISL POSTSEASON PREVIEW
By BRYAN HOCH
NEW YORK — A hobbled Juan Soto rose to his feet, staggering as an instrumental track from the “Rocky” soundtrack played over the Yankee Stadium speakers. From his vantage point in the first-base dugout, Jazz Chisholm Jr. recognized how this story line was going to conclude.
“The way he was looking around, you could see in his eyes, he was about to do something special,” Chisholm said.
Soto delivered a dramatic go-ahead home run, flipping his bat in celebration, and there would be more theatrics to come.
Austin Wells extended the game with a pinch-hit RBI in the 10th inning and Chisholm connected for his first career walk-off hit in the 11th as the Yankees defeated the Royals, 4-3, on Wednesday night in the Bronx.
“It just takes heart,” Chisholm said. “We know we’re not playing to our ability right now. Nobody’s hot right now; Cap [Aaron Judge] cooled off a little bit [15 games without a homer, tying his career-long from 2017]. Soto went into a little rut. But this is how you stay together. This is a championship team, and this is what we do. We grind it out.”
Facing left-hander Kris Bubic, Chisholm rapped a hard grounder to shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., who made a terrific diving play to snare the ball and threw home wide as pinch-runner Jon Berti dived home with the deciding run.
“I was really pleased that he didn’t get too big. He kept it real simple,” manager Aaron Boone said. “He got it off the barrel to get it just enough out of the reach of Witt there. Just a real quality at-bat in that situation.”
Luke Weaver was credited with the win as the Yanks’ third walk-off victory of the season moved them 1 1/2 games ahead of the second-place Orioles in the American League East race, after Baltimore was walked off by the Red Sox at Fenway Park.
This is a big series win for us against a really good club over there, that threw a lot of good pitching at us,” Boone said. “A lot of guys did a lot of really good things tonight in a game where runs were hard to come by.”
Chisholm, who also contributed a stellar defensive play that robbed Freddy Fermin of an extra-base hit in the sixth inning, said that the atmosphere was “like a playoff game.”
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