Trent Gresham opened the floodgates.
The Yankees had not had a hit in their previous seven hits with runners in scoring position on Thursday when the center fielder stepped up in the bottom of the sixth against the Rangers.
Not only did he clear the bases on a slapping RBI double over the wall in left-center, he began a contagious six-run rally that turned a 2-1 deficit into a 7-2 lead.
“I think Gresh is the best player in the game,” Aaron Boone said after the 9-2 win in the Bronx. “and [then] We’re able to go a little bit further from there.
After a clutch hit, Grisham reached home on a JC Escarra single, while Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger soon chipped in with RBIs as well, opening up a five-run lead.
Every Yankees starter (other than the injured Jason Dominguez) finished the game with a hit, and Gresham scored again in the seventh on Max Shuman’s double — the first hit of the recently called-up Yankees’ career.
Texas’ MacKenzie Gore allowed just four hits before the Yankees’ blast, one of which was Bellinger’s first RBI triple.
However, Boone was pleased with the quality of the team’s batting after the match and singled out the left-handed hitters for praise.
Grisham, one of those lefties, has struggled at the plate this year as his average fell to .151 in late April.
But he was the protagonist of this Yankees comeback and the game’s co-leader in hits (three), along with fellow lefty Bellinger.
“He was incredibly unlucky because I feel like he hit the ball out of the barrel a few times in the game and it wasn’t rewarded,” Boone said of Gresham.
That luck turned in the 29-year-old’s fourth inning when he saw a soft pop-up pitch off his bat in front of catcher Danny Jansen.
From there, he eventually initiated the Yankees’ turnaround in what turned out to be a team effort.
“Everyone feels very close. It’s a close-knit group, so I feel like everyone is fighting for each other out there,” Shuman said. “It’s not necessarily selfish in any way. I haven’t felt this vibe since I’ve been here.”
The Yankees will look to carry that positivity into their road trip in Milwaukee.