Unstoppable Yankees react to snatching 1st place from Red Sox

Yankees’ Aaron Judge, Aaron Boone and Brett Gardner talk about what it means to beat Red Sox and take 1st place in AL East from them after a 9-6 win on Wednesday, May 9, 2018 (5/9/18). CC Sabathia will be on the mound Thursday when the Yankees go for the three-game sweep of Boston.

NEW YORK — It was supposed to take months.

The Yankees, the heavy preseason AL East favorite, watched as the Red Sox jumped out to a 17-2 start. Aaron Boone, in his first year managing, had a 7-1/2-game deficit to navigate — and it was only April 20.

Flash forward to Wednesday: A four-run, eighth-inning rally — via the smacking of one of the game’s best closers — gave the Yankees much more than just a 9-6 win over Boston at a Yankee Stadium with a playoff atmosphere long before the playoffs begin.

It gave them sole possession of the division lead so much sooner than probably anybody thought possible.

Perhaps, of course, the Yankees.

Brighter future: Yankees or Sox?

“We’ve been playing good baseball,” said Brett Gardner, a catalyst with his three hits, including a two-run triple off Craig Kimbrel in the deciding frame that give the Yankees’ the lead for good.

“We’ve been pitching well, coming up with big hits in timely situations and it’s a crazy game we’re playing, a seven or eight game deficit erased within a couple of weeks. That can happen at any point in a year. We’ve just got to keep playing well and keep grinding and go for the sweep (Thursday).”

Chew on this:

The Yankees have gone 17-1 in their last 18 games — matching heir best 18-game stretch since doing the same thing in 1953.

They have won 11 straight home games — a new record since the new stadium opened.

Their eight-straight wins are currently a big-league high.

And the Yankees have won all eight of those games against teams in sole possession or tied for first place at the start of the game — the second-longest winning streak against clubs in that position behind the 1999 Reds.

“That’s just who those guys are, man,” Boone said. “They expect to be really good. They expect to be a great team. They come to work — it’s not even so much that you’re chasing results everyday, it’s that. you’re coming to work and you’re coming to grind the other team down and they’ve done a great job of that. Even when we were a little bit slow out of the gates, nothing really changed, the attitude, the focus, just the, we’re going to approach every single day, every single pitch, every single inning in a kind of very workman like way and they continue to do that all the while having fun playing the game of baseball, which always comes out.”

Said Aaron Judge, who belted a two-run blast in the eighth: “That’s the great thing about this team. We’re worried about night to night. We’re worried about whatever we can do to win tonight and once that’s over with, get ready for the next day. We’re not thinking of the past couple of weeks, we’re thinking about what was happening tonight. Now we’re looking forward to (Thursday).”

And why wouldn’t they be?

Brendan Kuty may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BrendanKutyNJ. Find NJ.com Yankees on Facebook.