Yankees pitching kept the vaunted Toronto Blue Jays offense quiet for the first eight innings on Thursday night, but in the ninth, with the bases loaded and nobody out and the Yankees holding a three-run lead, it looked like things were about to turn for the worst.
Luckily, Michael King was there to play hero.
Aroldis Chapman took the bump with a three-run lead to start the inning, but right from the jump it was pretty clear that Chapman’s command was all over the place. He walked three hitters and mixed in a wild pitch to load the bases and bring the go-ahead run to the plate with no outs.
At that point, Aaron Boone made the decision to pull Chapman –and his 309 career saves – from the game in favor of King, a 26-year-old with no major league saves under his belt.
“When the phone rang, I knew that only righties were coming up next and it could be my name,” King said of the call to the bullpen, “so I was really stretching well and then had 10, 12 pitches in the pen and felt good.”
Not only did King find a way to notch his first save, but he did so by pulling a Houdini act, getting out of the jam by facing just two hitters without allowing a single inherited runner to score. After striking out George Springer on three pitches, King induced a lazy looper to second that DJ LeMahieu was able to turn into a game-ending double play, giving the Yankees a 3-0 win.
“A ton of adrenaline and then just knowing you have to execute,” King said afterwards when asked about coming into the game under those murky circumstances. “I wanted to try to pound the bottom of the zone and get a ground ball. Once I got to 0-2 on Springer I went for the punchout, and then again tried to do the same thing and get a ground ball with Bichette, and got a double play in a different way.”
“He was tremendous,” said Boone, “and obviously coming up against the guys coming up there, to do what he did there with Springer was huge and then gets ahead of Bo there and gets some soft contact there that gets you nervous like it was heading for the outfield, but DJ looked like he got a really good read on it and then a really nice double play on it.
“Huge finish to the day.”
Boone was asked why Chapman didn’t seem to have any command on Thursday night, and while the skipper brought up the delayed start and the damp weather, he ultimately conceded that it was “just one of those nights.”
But for King, who added his first major league save to his resume against one of the best lineups in baseball, it’s one of those nights that he will always remember.
“It’s cool,” King said of his first save. “I really wasn’t thinking about it in the moment, but after [Anthony] Rizzo gave me the ball I thought it was pretty cool.”