ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 First there was sprinting left fielder Cody Bellinger, followed immediately by diving center fielder Trent Grisham and not too long after that leaping shortstop Jos\u00e9 Caballero.<\/p>\n
All three Yankees might have been outdone by\u00a0sliding reliever Fernando Cruz, who likes to remind his New York teammates he was drafted as an infielder.<\/p>\n
Cruz\u2019s defensive gem in a game full of them for the Yankees might get the most attention, after the right-hander cut off Joc Pederson\u2019s attempted sacrifice bunt between the mound and third base with two on and nobody out in the eighth inning of\u00a0New York\u2019s 3-2 victory over the Texas Rangers\u00a0on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Still sitting down after getting his glove on the ball, Cruz dug the ball out and bounced a throw to third while falling onto his back, and Ryan McMahon\u2019s stretch was enough to barely beat a sliding Josh Jung.<\/p>\n
MVP slugger Aaron Judge, who was focused on backing up first base from right field because he was worried about a potentially wild throw going in that direction, said he has heard Cruz\u2019s chatter about his past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I might believe him now,\u201d Judge said with a smile. \u201cWe\u2019ll see. I need to see a couple more good plays like that. I\u2019m more worried of having him just keep doing his thing on the mound. I think we\u2019ll be good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cruz escaped the inning with strikeouts of Jake Burger and pinch-hitter Ezequiel Duran, throwing seven consecutive strikes after his defensive masterpiece.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I describe myself as an adrenaline guy,\u201d said the 36-year-old Cruz, who was an infielder when Kansas City drafted him out of Puerto Rico in 2007 but converted to pitching before finally reaching the big leagues with Cincinnati in 2022. \u201cIt\u2019s just who I am. I locked it in after that, and everything just came out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bellinger opened the bottom of the first by running down Brandon Nimmo\u2019s leadoff flyball in the left-field corner, and Grisham sprinted in for a diving grab on Jung\u2019s liner for the second out.<\/p>\n
In the second inning, Caballero made his leaping play on a soft liner from Evan Carter in shallow left-center.<\/p>\n
Grisham had an injury scare in the ninth when his knee banged into the wall chasing Danny Jansen\u2019s triple that drove in the first Texas run. He stayed in the game, and manager Aaron Boone said he was fine.<\/p>\n
The Rangers had trimmed their deficit to one with slugging but struggling shortstop Corey Seager at the plate, and second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. started the game-ending double play on a grounder. Texas challenged whether Caballero came off the bag taking the throw at second, but replay confirmed the out.<\/p>\n
Grisham made another good play when he ran down a deep liner from Pederson on the warning track in right-center in the fourth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the defense that supports the pitching,\u201d Boone said after his team\u2019s 10th victory in 11 games. \u201cThere\u2019s been times when we didn\u2019t score a ton of runs. We didn\u2019t score a ton of runs tonight. You\u2019ve got to usually play clean when that happens to rack up wins.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 First there was sprinting left fielder Cody Bellinger, followed immediately by diving center fielder Trent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,7677,154],"class_list":["post-273860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}