Yankees lineup does the job to support Gerrit Cole in second straight win over Braves

For several weeks now, as a touching tribute not to this year’s Old-Timers but to their descendants, the Yankees have been play-acting as if part of the Dead Ball Era. 

They haven’t given up runs. They have had to fight and claw and grind and occasionally induce a balk to score their own. 

With the legends of the franchise’s past watching, perhaps the 2026 Yankees began to swing their way into the Modern Era. 

The Yankees’ lineup exploded — a term we do not use loosely, considering the past month-plus of ineptitude — for eight hits, a pair of home runs and just enough offense to come away with a 5-4 victory over Chris Sale and the Braves in front of 45,222 in The Bronx on Saturday afternoon. 

The Yankees (66-51), who have seen 18 of their past 24 games get decided by one or two runs, will try to sweep a series against the class of the NL East on Sunday and remain in front of the Red Sox for the top wild-card spot. 

Gerrit Cole (seven innings, two runs) continued what has been a remarkable run for Yankees starting pitchers, who sport a 1.67 ERA (64 ⅔ innings, 12 earned runs) in their past 11 games. 

But Cole was dented in the fifth inning, which meant he needed a bit of support. He found it mostly through a pair of rookies who are untested but have undeniable ability. 

Spencer Jones and George Lombard Jr. finished a combined 4-for-6 with two walks, a homer, a triple, three runs scored and three RBIs. The rest of the Yankees’ lineup went 4-for-24. 

The game was ultimately decided in the fifth, in which the Braves tagged Cole for two runs in the top half of the inning to take a 2-1 edge before the Yankees provided an immediate answer. 

Lombard — who seemingly does everything well — briefly struck out twice to lead off the frame, but in both instances he used challenges to earn balls three and four of the plate appearance. After the walk, up stepped Jones, who, against a big lefty famously dominant against same-sided hitters, cranked an RBI triple that split the outfielders in right-center to tie the game. 

A Yankees team that has scored more than five runs in a game just four times in its past 45 games needs to score any way it can, and so it will not apologize for the go-ahead run coming on a balk from Sale, who was irate but less outraged than his manager, Walt Weiss, who was ejected from the game. 

That mini-outburst from the Yankees’ offense, plus a second-inning RBI single from Jones, a seventh-inning porch shot from Lombard (second career homer) and a deep homer to center from Ben Rice in the eighth — snapping an 11-game home run drought — was just enough. 

Cole, like just about every other Yankees starter going these days, was excellent and consistently around the zone, 60 of his 82 pitches going for strikes. He struck out nine and let up just six hits without a walk. 

In the only inning that he struggled, he also showed resilience. To begin the fifth, Mauricio Dubón (double), Mike Yastrzemski (double), Austin Riley (single) and Jim Jarvis (single) rapped off four consecutive hits that plated a pair of runs and gave the Braves a narrow (and what would turn out to be a brief) lead. 

But with a pair of runners on base and the game perhaps in the balance, Cole used a biting slider to strike out Drake Baldwin, got Ronald Acuña Jr. to fly out and then needed just three pitches — the third a 98.8 mph fastball — to strike out Matt Olson, whom Cole has owned in his career. That strikeout was the 1,000th of Cole’s Yankees tenure. 

After Cole, Brent Headrick, Paul Blackburn and David Bednar (26th save) preserved the victory, Headrick getting touched by a solo shot from Acuña and Bednar allowing a ninth-inning run but nothing more.