WASHINGTON — The Yankees beat Nationals 4-2 on Saturday, and once again they made the home fans wait until the last possible moment to find out how. Ryan McMahon, Trent Grisham and Paul Goldschmidt all went deep in the eighth inning, turning a two-run deficit into a lead in the span of five batters and handing New York its third straight win.
It’s becoming a theme. A night earlier, the Yankees were down 3-2 in the ninth before Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Austin Wells homered to steal a 5-3 win. Saturday, they didn’t even wait for the ninth. They just moved the rally up a frame.
A Two-Run Hole, Built Early
James Wood made sure the Nationals got off to a loud start. He turned on Cam Schlittler’s first-pitch fastball and drove it out to right-center for his ninth leadoff homer of the season — his 27th overall — and Washington led before New York’s defense had settled into the game. Two batters later, Curtis Mead added a solo shot to left-center, and it was 2-0 before the Yankees had come to bat.
That’s the kind of start that’s buried plenty of road teams in this ballpark. Not this one. Not this weekend.
Washington threatened to blow the game open in the fourth, loading the bases on a pair of two-out walks. Schlittler got Nasim Nunez to end it. The Nationals loaded the bases again in the seventh — Wood and Luis Garcia Jr. reaching on infield singles, Mead drawing a walk — and reliever Brent Headrick got CJ Abrams to chase a pitch out of the zone for the third out. Two bases-loaded jams, zero runs. That’s the game in miniature: Washington kept setting the table and kept coming up empty.
Yankees Beat Nationals 4-2 With a Three-Homer Eighth
New York had chances of its own go nowhere early. Rice and Grisham singled to lead off the sixth, but Goldschmidt hit into a double play and Bellinger flied out to end the threat. Through seven, the Yankees had traded shots with a good team’s bullpen and had nothing to show for it.
Then the eighth arrived, and the math finally broke New York’s way.
McMahon led it off against Orlando Ribalta and drove one out with one away, cutting the deficit to 2-1. Ben Rice walked. Washington manager Blake Butera went to Clayton Beeter — a former Yankees prospect — to face Grisham, who turned on a pitch and sent it out for a two-run homer. Just like that, 3-2 Yankees. Goldschmidt followed with his 15th of the season, a shot that landed in the Yankee bullpen in left-center, and New York had its final run of the night before the Nationals ever got a chance to answer.
Three swings. Four runs. A road team that had been shut down for seven innings suddenly had the whole game.
Schlittler Grinds Through Traffic
Give Schlittler credit for keeping the Yankees in position to do it. He allowed both Nationals runs on four hits across 6 2/3 innings, struck out six and tied his season high with four walks — hardly his cleanest outing, but he wriggled out of two bases-loaded jams that could’ve turned this into a laugher for Washington. That’s a start that doesn’t show up pretty in the box score line, but it’s the reason New York’s bats got a shot at a two-run game instead of a five-run one.
Headrick (5-1) picked up the win with a scoreless eighth. David Bednar closed it out in the ninth for his 18th save, and the Nationals were left to absorb their 27th blown save of the season — a number that says plenty about why a team with James Wood hitting the way he’s hitting keeps losing close ones.
Wood, for what it’s worth, was terrific again. Three hits, including the homer, in a loss. He’s turned into the one Washington bat opposing pitchers genuinely have to work around, and Saturday was one more example.
Third Straight Win, Second Straight Late Rally
This is New York’s third consecutive win, and the second in a row that required a late-inning strike to get there. Friday it was the ninth. Saturday it was the eighth. Different innings, same identity: a lineup that isn’t going to blow anybody out early but has shown, twice in two nights, that it can turn a game in three swings when it matters.
Whether that’s a sustainable formula into the stretch run or a hot weekend against a shaky bullpen is a fair question. But a win’s a win, and three in a row is three in a row.
What Comes Next
The series wraps up Sunday in Washington, with the Yankees looking to complete the sweep before the All-Star break. For a team that lost 15 of 20 earlier this month, back-to-back-to-back wins — two of them delivered in the final innings — count as exactly the kind of stretch it needed heading into the second half.
