NEW YORK — Dylan Moore isn’t quite ready to return to the role of bench player and sometimes starter with the return of regular shortstop JP Crawford.
Although he’s still an everyday position player, Moore knows the key to continuing to play consistently for manager Scott Servais is to continue producing at the plate.
If he hits, he’ll find a spot in the lineup and one of seven positions he can play.
As if he wasn’t doing enough in Crawford’s absence, Moore gave Servais another reason to keep playing him Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium.
Moore drove in four runs on two homers and a single to help the Mariners to a 6-3 victory over the Yankees.
“I love playing,” Moore said. “And I love hitting.” If you hit, you play.
Moore has been one of Seattle’s best hitters over the past few weeks. In his last 13 games, he is hitting .333 (14-for-42) with five doubles, a triple, four home runs, 13 RBIs, six walks and nine strikeouts.
Servais doesn’t make him sit down
“Absolutely not, he will play tomorrow,” Servais said. “We’ll play him in left field tomorrow. We’re facing a lefty and we’re going to get some other guys in the lineup. I hope (Jorge) Polanco can join us tomorrow, but that’s what it takes, everyone participates and it doesn’t matter where you are on the pitch.
The Yankees returned to the Bronx with a seven-game winning streak that included road sweeps of the Twins and the dreadful White Sox. Seattle handed them back-to-back home losses for the first time this season.
The Mariners improved to 27-22, with the five games above .500 being their highest this season. They are the only team with a winning record in the AL West.
“A hell of an effort tonight,” Servais said. “And it starts with the guy on the mound.”
Seattle is off to a great start thanks to right-hander Bryan Woo, returning to the spot where he picked up his first MLB win of 2023.
With his parents and several other family members and friends cheering loudly in the stands, Woo pitched six scoreless innings, allowing just two hits with no walks and seven strikeouts to earn the victory. Working off a pitch limit of 85, Woo was remarkably efficient, needing only 77 pitches to cover the six innings.
“It’s just good to get a win,” Woo said. “When you get here, you have to be ready to go. There are no problems, no delays, etc. They will be ready to go, the crowd will be ready to go, so you have to be ready to go. It just improves your game a little. If you really enjoy competing and playing in environments like this, then it’s a lot of fun.
Using his four-seam fastball extensively and showing excellent field command, Woo threw first-pitch strikes to 15 of the 20 batters he faced and had only three counts that reached three balls . He was on the attack from his first throw. He was able to elevate the fastball to generate 10 swings and misses in the field.
“You really have to throw that way against this ballclub,” Servais said. “You run into bad accounts, that’s what they kind of feed off of, when they get into batting accounts and take advantage of it. Bryan did not allow this to happen. He stayed on offense against a very good lineup. He took on some of the best hitters in the league and had complete control of the strike zone all night. »
Since returning from the injured list, Woo has made three starts and allowed one run in 15 2/3 innings pitched with two walks and 15 strikeouts and a 2-0 record.
Woo’s teammates rewarded him with atypical support while he was in the game. Batting the bats against Yankees starter Clarke Schmidt and increasing his pitch count at a rapid pace, Seattle took a 2-0 lead in the third inning.
Josh Rojas went 0-for-15 with a one-out double down the first-base line. As the count began, Moore worked hard and fired a cutter into the left field seats for a two-run homer and a 2-0 lead.
“I was trying to get used to Schmidt’s different pitches and the way they were moving earlier in the AB,” Moore said. “I was trying to get him up in the zone and I managed to get his head off the stick.”
It took Schmidt 100 pitches to get through five innings, ending his outing early.
“It’s always important to do that even with a team that has a good bullpen,” Moore said.
The Yankees don’t have a good bullpen. And the Mariners exploited it.
Seattle tacked on two more runs for Woo in the top of the seventh. Ty France greeted right-hander Dennis Santana with a solo home run to left field. France hit a 1-0 lead from Santana, sending an explosion into the stands measured at 402 feet.
“We played him a lot last season when he was with Texas,” France said. “I knew he was going to throw a lot of pellets at me.”
Mitch Garver followed with a double to left and then scored on Moore’s single up the middle to make it 4-0.
But the comfortable lead was quickly erased as the bullpen created its own mess to relieve Woo.
Gabe Speier asked Aaron Judge to start the problems. He came back to strike out Alex Verdugo, but then hit Anthony Rizzo with a pitch. While the Yankees called on Giancarlo Stanton to hit left-handed Austin Wells, Servais turned to right-hander Trent Thornton to get out of trouble.
When Stanton hit a towering pop-up behind home plate that Cal Raleigh managed to catch despite stepping on a weighted bat sleeve in the on-deck zone, it looked like Thornton might be able to maintain the 4-0 lead. Instead, Gleyber Torres hit a 3-2 fastball into the left field seats to cut Seattle’s lead to 4-3.
But as the crowd of 37,257 started to get loud, Luke Raley and Moore silenced them.
In the top of the eighth inning, Raley greeted reliever Clayton Andrews by hammering the lefty’s first pitch into the right field seats to cut the lead to 5-3.
Moore closed out his big night in the ninth inning. He worked a 3-1 count on powerful right-hander Nick Burdi, then didn’t miss the fastball he expected, sending a deep strike into the right-field seats for his second homer of the game.
THE SCORE OF THE BOX