Hours before the Yankees hosted the Padres for a rubber match at Yankee Stadium, Aaron Boone took a question about his team’s league-leading offense.
“We’ve got a lot of firepower,” the manager said, in part, a day after the Yankees scored 10 runs in the seventh inning of a 12-3 win.
Such a forceful explosion didn’t repeat itself on Wednesday, but the Yankees did drop a few bombs in a 10-inning, 4-3 win. The back-and-forth affair ended with a pinch-hit, walk-off sac fly from J.C. Escarra after an Oswaldo Cabrera bunt moved Jasson Domínguez, the automatic runner, over to third.
“A lot was going through my mind. My heart was pounding through my chest standing there hitting. But you know my story,” said Escarra, an Uber-driving, substitute-teaching Indy ballplayer before catching on with the Yankees. “What happened today, it makes it all worth it. So I just gotta thank Boonie and my teammates for trusting me with that at-bat.”
Prior to Escarra’s heroics, which came against the nasty Jeremiah Estrada, San Diego’s Dylan Cease kept the Yankees hitless for 6.1 innings.
But with the Padres up 1-0 in the seventh, Cody Bellinger ended Cease’s bid for his second career no-no when he smoked a game-tying, solo homer. Cease exited two batters later with a forearm cramp, while San Diego scored two more runs in the eighth on a Jackson Merrill single and a Xander Bogaerts sac fly with Luke Weaver pitching.
No matter for the Yankees, though, as pinch-hitter and former Padre Trent Grisham knotted the game when he drilled a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth after a Cabrera walk. The blast, launched off Jason Adam, gave Grisham 10 homers for the season and set up Escarra’s game-winner.
As Grisham’s homer sailed into the second deck, the Bronx erupted. Meanwhile, the soft-spoken veteran put his head down, flipped his bat to himself, and then tossed it aside before rounding the bases.
Grisham Goner
pic.twitter.com/giGJ3EoA9e
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) May 8, 2025
“Try not to swing at the changeup down and away,” Grisham said of his approach before adding, “I treat every day that I’m not starting like I am starting, just a little later. So I go down in the fifth, get loose, get ready, go in, get my swings, and then just be ready to roll.”
Weaver, meanwhile, rebounded for a scoreless ninth before Devin Williams worked himself into and out of a bases-loaded jam in the 10th.
While Williams, recently removed as the Yankees’ closer, walked and hit a batter with the ghost runner already on, he struck out Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts before roaring off the mound.
“It was a big spot,” said Williams, who hasn’t been cheered much at Yankee Stadium thus far. “Starting with the runner at second, getting out of that without giving up any runs, I felt like our guys were gonna come through, and the game was gonna be over, and it was.”
Jam: escaped.
Devin Williams: fired up.
Yankee Stadium: LOUD.(MLB x @CoronaUSA) pic.twitter.com/uLSwPeCG3V
— MLB (@MLB) May 8, 2025
While late longballs set the Yankees up for a comeback, Cease dominated them with a high-90s heater and what Boone called an “excellent” slider before getting hurt. With the occasional knuckle-curve sprinkled in, the 29-year-old totaled 6.2 innings, one hit, one earned run, two walks and nine strikeouts over 89 pitches.
The Padres added Cease ahead of the 2024 season after they flipped pitching prospect Drew Thorpe – acquired from the Yankees in the Juan Soto deal – to the White Sox. Cease no-hit the Nationals on July 25 last year.
Opposite Cease, former Padres prospect Max Fried delivered another gem for the Yankees. The only mistake he made came on a fourth-inning solo shot from Merrill, as Fried left a sweeper over the plate.
The lefty now has a 1.05 ERA after tallying seven innings, five hits, one earned run, zero walks, eight strikeouts and 100 pitches on Wednesday.
“This was one of Max’s best, frankly. I thought his command was really good tonight,” said Boone, whose club is 8-0 when Fried starts. “Stuff-wise, he was really good, but this might have been his best command game, in my opinion, all year. And obviously that’s saying something with as well as he’s pitched.”
Fried agreed with his manager’s assessment of his command.
“That’s a really great lineup over there, so you just gotta be on your A game,” Fried said. “Especially going up against Cease, you gotta bring it.”
Wednesday’s win snapped a series losing streak for the Yankees, as they previously dropped three-game sets to the division rival Rays and Orioles. With that in mind, Boone said it felt good to win a “great game.”
“We’ve been in a lot of these kinds of games where we feel like we’ve been on the wrong side in a few,” he said. “So nice to punch through with that, because I feel like we’re going to be really good.”
Grisham, meanwhile, felt the series victory over the second-place Padres was a representative one for the first-place Yankees.
“This series was kind of the epitome of the guys that are in this locker room: a lot of fight,” he said. “Every game we were down and fighting back. We were in every single one of them. To come away with the last two is huge.”
With an off day on Thursday, next on the docket is a west coast road trip that begins in Sacramento on Friday.
Will Warren and Carlos Rodón are lined up for the first two games against the Athletics, but the Yankees haven’t decided on a Sunday starter yet. They will face Osvaldo Bido in the opener before taking on former pinstripers JP Sears and Luis Severino.