Where were you for the Jose Trevino game?
A back and forth, marathon contest at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night ended with the catcher smacking a ball down the left field line for a walk-off single in the 11th inning. The clutch hit gave the Yankees a 7-6 win in a game that looked to be slipping away from them, including in the top half of the eleventh.
Trevino finished the game 3-for-4 with three RBI, a home run and a walk. After the game, Trevino, a native of Corpus Christi, Tex., revealed the game had extra significance for him.
“I just want to start by saying my thoughts and prayers are with everybody in Uvalde, Texas tonight,” Trevino said, referring to the town where 19 children were killed in a school shooting earlier in the day. “I know y’all saw some tears. There’s a reason behind it. My dad was a huge Yankees fan. He would always put me in these scenarios. ‘Ninth inning, down one, we need a base hit here to tie the game or win the game, at Yankee Stadium.’ My dad passed away in 2013. Today was his birthday.
“It would have been awesome for him to be here today, but I know he’s watching.”
Isiah Kiner-Falefa scored the winning run on Trevino’s knock. The two played together in Texas as well, and Kiner-Falefa revealed that he was part of another special moment for Trevino involving his dad in 2018.
“I was on second base, and it was Father’s Day,” Kiner-Falefa began. “He hit a walkoff single. That was a cool moment that I got to be a part of. I scored the winning run. For me to score the winning run again in kind of the same situation, on a bigger stage for the Yankees, that was a cool moment for him to earn those pinstripes.”
The Yankees started the game looking like a team that was tired of losing, even if their streak was only at three in a row. After four innings they had a three-run lead that is often enough to take care of a team like the Orioles. While they lost their way a bit during the game, they still left the field after three hours and 36 minutes with a win in hand.
Anthony Rizzo got that no-nonsense plan in motion early. Strolling to the plate as the Yankees’ third hitter of the night, Rizzo turned around a 90 mile per hour fastball on the inside corner and watched it sail into the second deck. The picturesque home run was Rizzo’s 12th of the year but only second in the month of May. Before the game, Yankees’ manager Aaron Boone suggested that Rizzo’s month-long slump was coming from a timing issue, and that sometimes one good swing is all it takes to get right again.
If Rizzo’s first at-bat of the night was any indication — he struck out, sharply grounded into the shift and drew two walks in his remaining plate appearances — the barrage of home runs that defined the beginning of his season may be on their way back.
With Joey Gallo and Josh Donaldson (COVID injured list), Kyle Higashioka (activated from the COVID IL just hours before the game) and DJ LeMahieu (left wrist discomfort), all out of the lineup, Trevino’s unexpected big day came at the perfect time. With just 11 career home runs entering the game, he demolished a ball 413 feet into the Baltimore bullpen in the third inning for the Yankees’ second tally of the night.
Gleyber Torres joined the solo home run party in the fourth inning. At that point, a Yankee win seemed like a formality, but the Orioles get paid to play in the big leagues too. Rougned Odor started their comeback with an RBI groundout in the fifth to give the O’s life, Austin Hays slapped one over the short porch in the seventh, and four batters later, Odor landed what looked like the knockout blow.
Odor’s line drive into the right field seats off his former teammate Michael King gave Baltimore a late 5-3 lead, stunning the crowd who were both expecting a straightforward win and had watched King blow the ball past hitters all season.
The Yankees were able to answer the bell after Odor got his revenge. In their half of the seventh — right after Estevan Florial unexpectedly pinch hit for Giancarlo Stanton, who Boone reported was dealing with a “lower leg” that flared up on him in the batting cage — Torres connected for his second jack of the night. Trevino came up later in the inning with two outs and put an RBI single into right field.
That sent the AL East foes into the eighth inning with the game tied at five, waiting for the other side to blink first. That fatal blink finally came from Baltimore’s Bryan Baker in the bottom of the 11th. The Orioles’ reliever couldn’t do anything to stop Trevino, a man who, at least for one night, was the king of Yankee Stadium.
“I tell you guys all the time that adversity is coming,” Boone said. “We just gotta keep on competing and fighting. That game embodied that. Get out to a lead, lose the lead, scratch and claw and get back into it. Then, fight to the end there to pull one out with some real winning at-bats.”
With the revelation that Trevino’s storybook day came on his late father’s birthday, the Yankees added a wonderfully wholesome moment to a week that’s been anything but.
“I woke up this morning, had a good cup of coffee in one of his favorite coffee mugs,” Trevino said of his father. “It was definitely a fun one. He helped me a lot.”
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