NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Last week, JP Sears was pitching before 4,209 fans at Toledo. Now he was getting a standing ovation from a screaming crowd of 38,051 at Yankee Stadium.
“That was awesome. That’s something that I really appreciate,” the 26-year-old left-hander said Tuesday night after stretching his scoreless streak to 12 2/3 innings and pitching the big league-leading Yankees over the worst-in-majors Oakland Athletics 2-1.
“Watching a lot of baseball growing up, it was fun to watch from that side of the TV, so it was fun to be on that side of it tonight.”
Wearing No. 92, the highest jersey number in Yankees history for a starting pitcher, Sears (3-0) made his second spot start and limited the A’s to three hits in 5 2/3 innings, getting nine groundball outs. Throwing at up to 95.7 mph, Sears mixed fastballs, sliders and changeups among 78 pitches.
Jose Trevino backed him with an RBI single in the first off trade candidate Frankie Montas (3-8), Marwin Gonzalez homered in the second and the Yankees won for the 15th time in 19 games.
Sears then was optioned back to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
“The thing we really pride ourselves on is making this a seamless transition between the major leagues and minor leagues,” pitching coach Matt Blake said. “This room does a good job of accepting guys when they come up here and embrace them and get them to just be themselves and it allows them to go out there and be aggressive in the zone.”
An 11th-round draft pick by Seattle in 2017, Sears was obtained after that season in a trade for right-hander Nick Rumbelow. When the 2020 minor league season was canceled because of the pandemic, Sears tried to refine his motion with Daniel Moskos, then the pitching coach at the Yankees’ Class A affiliate in Charleston, South Carolina, and former teammates James Reeves and Asher Wojciechowski.
“I just worked on my mechanics a lot, shortening my arm action, just trying to clean up my movement on the mound,” Sears said.
He made it to Triple-A last season and has a 1.83 ERA this year at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
Sears earned a spot on the Yankees’ expanded opening day roster and made two one-inning appearances before he was sent down on April 18. He got his first major league start against Baltimore on May 25 after a rainout caused New York to reset its rotation. Before him, the highest number for a Yankees starting pitcher was Alfredo Aceves’ No. 91.
New York brought Sears back to give Luis Severino, Gerrit Cole, Jameson Taillon, Nestor Cortes and Jordan Montgomery extra rest. The Yankees had been the only team in the majors not to have a sixth pitcher make multiple starts this season.
Sears joined Clarke Schmidt and Ron Marinaccio as rookie pitchers contributing to the Yankees’ 55-20 record, the best 75-game start since the 2001 Seattle Mariners.
“There’s kind of an expectation that they have within themselves that you can’t manufacture,” manager Aaron Boone said. “JP’s a really nice kid, an understated smart kid, but he’s tough. He’s got an edge to him and he expects to do that when he goes out there.”
Clay Holmes pitched the ninth to finish a six-hitter for his 13th save in 14 chances. After two catcher’s interference calls against Sean Murphy on Monday, Murphy reached on an interference call on Trevino with two outs in the ninth on a grounder to second that caused the public-address system to play the game-ending “New York, New York.”
Pinch-hitter Stephen Vogt and Elvis Andrus singled, driving in a run, and Tony Kemp grounded out to strand two runners.
Sears had soaked in the scene hours earlier.
“I let myself take that in the first couple minutes I step on the field to warm up and just enjoy that part of it,” he said. “After that, it’s the plate, the catcher and the umpire and the hitter out there.”