Michael King’s first MLB career parade gave Aroldis Chapman a huge boost Thursday night.
After Chapman ran through bases with no outs in the ninth inning – putting the go-ahead on the plate – King replaced him and needed just five pitches, all strikes, to give the Yankees a 3-0 win over the Blue Jays .
“A lot of adrenaline and then just knowing you have to execute it,” King said. “It was fun.”
King beat George Springer on three pitches and then tricked Bo Bichette into hitting a soft liner. DJ LeMahieu caught the ball and threw first for a double play.
“[King] was great,” said manager Aaron Boone.
King warmed up in a hurry after Chapman struggled to find the plate. The Yankees threw closer 16 pitches, only four of which were strikes, as he walked the bottom three hitters in the Blue Jays’ lineup.
Chapman, who suffered a tough midseason slump last year, had gone three innings without going with a batsman before Thursday.
Michael KingN.Y. Contribution: Karl Wenzelberg
“The fastball command wasn’t that sharp tonight,” Chapman said through an interpreter.
Five days after Jordan Montgomery took a 102-mile groundball off his left knee, he will get back on the mound Friday in Baltimore.
After the left-hander had several imaging tests and had his knee deflated to reduce swelling, he survived a bullpen session on Wednesday without issue and felt ready to go on Thursday.
“[When I’m] Pitching, I don’t feel anything, so it’s a blessing,” Montgomery said. “It’s just a bruise. Even if I felt something, it’s still a bruise, so there’s nothing you can do but get through it.”
Still, the Yankees took the week off Montgomery cautiously. He went for an MRI and CT scan to make sure he hadn’t suffered the same fate as Braves veteran Charlie Morton, who broke his leg (from a missed the first x-ray).
Boone called Montgomery’s recovery a “huge” relief this week. Although Montgomery was also glad the ball from Xander Bogaerts’ bat hit him in the leg and not “above the hips,” he called such comebackers “a pitcher’s nightmare.”
“I feel like a piñata out there sometimes,” said Montgomery, who recalls being hit twice by comebackers before Sunday.
After starting their season with an immediate gut check against the Red Sox and Blue Jays, the Yankees left the Bronx for Baltimore Thursday night. The Yankees begin a three-game series against the Orioles on Friday.
The Yankees went just 11-8 against the Orioles last season while other members of the division took better advantage of them: the Rays went 18-1, the Blue Jays 14-5 and the Red Sox 13-6.
“I think it’s been a bit of a bad year for us offensively where we didn’t send teams, no matter who they were, away on as many nights as we should have or could have,” Boone said. “We learned last year that if we don’t play well, they will beat us. So we have to do our best no matter who we’re playing against and not let the ‘we have to win so many out of 19’ trick. We have to show up every day and play well.”