Young’s late homer gives Yankees come from behind 3-2 win over Astros

Source: FanGraphs

For the first six innings or so, it looked like the Yankees had a Dallas Keuchel hangover. The Astros ace dominated New York on Thursday and it took a while for their bats to recover Friday night. But, once they did, a clutch late-inning homer turned a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead and a win in the second game of the series in Houston. It’s Friday night, so let’s recap with bullet points:

• Young Again: Man, what a pickup Chris Young has been. Yeah, he slumped a bit in May, but he has five hits in this series and swatted the go-ahead three-run home run in the seventh inning on Friday. The Yankees appeared headed for another shutout loss when Young sent a Will Harris pitch out to left field. Harris came into the game with a 0.78 ERA this season, by the way. He’s Houston’s relief ace. Young went 3-for-4 and now has nine homers off the bench. Good bench players are so valuable.
• Nasty Nate: Outside of the disaster in Miami — and it was awful, no doubt about it — Nathan Eovaldi has been pretty good the last six weeks or so. Not great, but solid. He held the Astros to two runs on five hits and two walks in six innings, striking out six. The second run scored a dinky bloop just out of Stephen Drew’s reach. Eovaldi got eleven swings and misses, his third highest total of the season. Nice start, Nate.
• Bullpen On Parade: Three innings, five strikeouts, no hits for the bullpen. Chasen Shreve struck out the side in the seventh, Justin Wilson got two outs before walking a batter in the eighth, and Dellin Betances nailed down the four-out save. Betances struck out Evan Gattis on three pitches to end the eighth with the tying run in scoring position. Great night for the ‘pen. Shreve has been something else, hasn’t he? What a find.
• Leftovers: Brett Gardner, who sat out Thursday’s game, stayed hot with two hits, including a double off the left-center field wall … Chase Headley had a single and two walks … Garrett Jones had two hits, including one off a lefty … Jose Altuve stole second in the sixth inning. It was the first successful steal against Eovaldi in 196.1 innings. Crazy. He’s the best right-handed pitcher in baseball at shutting down the running game.

Here are the box score, video highlights, updated standings, Bullpen Workload page, and Announcer Standings page. The Yankees and Astros continue this four-game series on Saturday afternoon, when Masahiro Tanaka gets the ball against lefty Brett Oberholtzer.