Higgy Stardust & Gerrit Cole Lead Yanks: NY 13 Toronto 2

Another day, another win, another hero. Or two, or three, or four. This time it was Kyle Higashioka — “Higgy” — hitting 3 (three) home runs, Gerrit Cole pitching 7 innings of 3-hit, 1-run baseball, 8 strikeouts (a no-hitter through 5 innings), DJ LeMahieu with a 3-4, 2-home run performance, Luke Voit with Another home run (leads league with 19), and Clint Frazier 2-3 with 2 walks and a home run playing leftfield with all the regulars back — a special moment for him signifying that he has made it.

Higgy 1:

Views from The 66 pic.twitter.com/emvN5FtaRy

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 17, 2020

Higgy 2:

It's another Hig Fly 😮 pic.twitter.com/ACwAPaq2X2

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 17, 2020

Higgy 3:

Higashi-omg 😱 pic.twitter.com/wKpNuQTQ7u

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 17, 2020

Is that it? Well the Yanks as a team have now won 7 in a row and are 1.5 ahead of Toronto for 2nd place; they are 3 back of Tampa with 11 games to play.

The Yanks jumped on top 1-0 in the 1st, added 2 more in the 3rd, 3 in the 4th for a 6-0 lead against Toronto starter Tanner Roark. Then Toronto brought in Jacob Waguespack and the Yanks got another in the 5th and exploded for 4 more runs in the 6th to make it 11-0.

It was a giddy night for Yankee Twitter — which spent the evening:

Feeling happy that Higgy has turned out so good as the backup catcher — the Yanks let Austin Romine go to free agency putting Higgy on the spot to hit well enough to hold the backup job. Now, everyone is going to have to learn how to spell Higashioka’s last name — quite easy if you examine it a bit. After the game, Gerrit Cole said “With the way he’s swinging, I might be his personal pitcher.”
Discussing DJ LeMahieu and Luke Voit in terms of American League MVP, and more granularly — which of them was the Yankees’ team MVP?
Praising Gerrit Cole who appears to have not been cheating after all in Houston but is actually a really good pitcher.

Frazier Stardust

After the game, Clint Frazier said “there was definitely a moment tonight when I was smiling under my mask in left field. To go out there with the team at full strength meant a lot to me.” John Sterling mused on the radio that if you projected Frazier’s numbers (he is at almost 100 at bats — actually at 99) through a 500-at-bat season he’d be on pace for 35 homers and over 100 RBI. Frazier is batting .303 with a .421 OBP.