Jazz on Yankees' surge: 'We're the team to beat'

BOSTON -- The New York Yankees outlasted the Boston Red Sox for the 2nd consecutive time Saturday, beating their rivals 4-3 successful beforehand of a sellout assemblage astatine Fenway Park to grow their pb for the apical American League wild-card spot to 1½ games.

The Yankees' 83-65 grounds ranks 3rd successful the American League, 3 games down the first-place Toronto Blue Jays successful the AL East. With 14 games remaining, New York has an extracurricular changeable astatine claiming the AL East rubric and the league's apical effect for the 2nd consecutive year.

But Yankees 2nd baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. doesn't judge the standings accurately correspond the league's hierarchy. To him, the Yankees are the squad to bushed successful the American League.

"I consciousness similar immoderate squad that thinks they're amended than us, they should cognize that erstwhile we measurement connected the field, that we're coming with relentlessness and we're coming to measurement connected necks," Chisholm said. "We're not present to play around. We're going to bash the occupation and get the occupation done."

After going 2-for-4 with 2 stolen bases Friday, Chisholm finished Saturday 3-for-4 with a location tally and 3 RBIs to determination wrong 1 location tally of becoming the 3rd Yankee ever to station a 30/30 play and the archetypal since Alfonso Soriano successful 2003.

He said a caller "talk" among the players that occurred distant from the ballpark helped spark the Yankees' caller turnaround aft the squad squandered a comfy pb successful the AL East successful mid-June.

"Honestly, everybody conscionable started locking in," Chisholm said.

The Yankees are 13-5 since Aug. 24, a agelong that began with a triumph implicit the Red Sox astatine Yankee Stadium. The occurrence was buoyed by winning six of 7 games against the Washington Nationals and Chicago White Sox -- 2 of the worst teams successful the majors -- but it has besides included the Yankees going 7-4 against the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Houston Astros and Detroit Tigers -- 4 AL clubs positioned to scope the postseason.

New York volition implicit the four-team gauntlet with Sunday night's bid finale astatine Fenway Park, facing AL Cy Young Award campaigner Garrett Crochet. It volition beryllium the Yankees' last regular-season crippled against a squad implicit .500; they decorativeness the docket with 3 games against the Minnesota Twins, 3 against the White Sox and 7 against the Baltimore Orioles.

"All these games are ace important," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. "So, to get different triumph successful this spot against, evidently a truly bully hostile and Crochet waiting tomorrow, truthful this was a bully 1 to get. Hopefully, we tin spell retired and decorativeness disconnected a large series."

Through Saturday, the Yankees are 45-43 against teams implicit .500 this season. They're 26-29 against AL teams with winning records. They'll person to beryllium amended successful October to scope the World Series again.

"We said it each twelvemonth long, that we've been playing to everybody else's level alternatively of our ain level," Chisholm said. "We...