Gerrit Cole’s strong start against Tigers leads Yankees to first series win since July – The Denver Post

For the first time in over a month, the Yankees won a series.

Gerrit Cole continued his Cy Young Award-caliber campaign in Wednesday night’s 6-2 road win against the Detroit Tigers, during which a balanced offensive outburst from the Yankees lineup gave the right-hander more than enough run support.

Cole struck out seven over six innings, allowing two runs on four hits to a Detroit offense that ranks second-to-last among MLB teams in scoring.

The 32-year-old Cole improved to 12-4 with a 2.95 ERA and 188 strikeouts in 174 innings this season. He’s never won a Cy Young Award but finished within the top five of the voting five times.

“My job is to go out there and just give us an opportunity to win the game every time and do my best at it,” Cole said afterward. “Sometimes you have great stuff and everything is working and that can be easy, and sometimes there’s gonna be some challenges, both from the opposition and sometimes inside yourself. It’s about overcoming those and trying to replicate the same results every time.”

The Yankees received at least one RBI from four different players, including DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres and Giancarlo Stanton, who each hit solo home runs. Torres, who has homered three days in a row in Detroit, and Stanton went back-to-back in the fourth inning.

“[It’s] just good to get some good, quality at-bats from different guys throughout the order,” manager Aaron Boone said.

The 425-foot blast was Stanton’s 398th career home run and his 20th of the season. The 33-year-old has now hit at least 20 home runs in 12 different seasons, the most among MLB batters since 2010.

Wednesday marked the Yankees’ third win in a row over the Tigers, whom they’ll conclude a four-game series with Thursday afternoon. They received seven shutout innings from Luis Severino in Monday’s win and four scoreless frames from Michael King on Tuesday, when the offense also provided three homers.

The Yankees (65-68) hadn’t won a series since a three-game sweep of the Kansas City Royals in the Bronx from July 21-23. They went 0-8-2 over their next 10 series, a stretch that included their first nine-game losing streak in more than four decades.

Detroit (59-74) will look to avoid a four-game sweep Thursday afternoon behind starting pitcher Matt Manning, the ninth overall pick in the 2016 MLB Draft who is 5-4 with a 3.93 ERA this season. The Yankees will turn to their own former first-round pick in Clarke Schmidt, who is 8-8 with a 4.51 ERA.

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