None of that stopped the Yankees lineup from doing damage. New York scored 2 in the first, added a run in the 4th, then blew it open with a 4-run 7th before tacking on 2 more in the 8th — a night where the middle of the order simply wore Houston's pitching staff down.
The 7th inning was the breaking point. Bellinger, Jones and Chisholm each drove in a run to turn a manageable deficit into a laugher, and a 2-run homer in the 8th put it away for good. Houston got a solo shot from Varsho, but that was the extent of the offense the Astros could muster against a Yankees pitching staff that held the line after Rodríguez's spot start.
Houston's bullpen took the brunt of it late, unable to hold the line once the Yankees strung hits together, and it capped a rough week for an Astros relief corps that's already been dealing with attrition. Lambert didn't help matters after coming in off a disaster start where he'd allowed 9 earned runs in 3.2 innings against the Angels — 4 hits, 4 errors and a mid-60s season sitting at 66-66 is not the form a team wants walking into the stretch run.
New York, by contrast, got exactly the kind of length-and-execution outing you hope for from a starter who hadn't pitched in the majors in over 2 months. The win pushes the Yankees back over .500 in their last 5 and keeps them rolling toward a stretch where more reinforcements — Fried, and eventually Judge — could be walking back through the clubhouse door.
These two split the first two meetings of the set, and with both rosters still shuffling pieces in and out of the injured list, the shape of this series — and each team's stretch drive — is going to keep changing by the day.