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NEW YORK -- You could practically hear the groans in the ballpark when the announcement was made before the start of the seventh inning Wednesday: "Defensive change for the Yankees. Now playing second base, Stephen Drew." Up to that point, it had been a pretty good night for the New York Yankees and their fans. CC Sabathia weathered a rough start to settle down for 5 1/3 serviceable innings and left with a 3-2 lead, which had been extended to 4-2 by the second of two home runs by Mark Teixeira, the Yankees' lone All-Star position player this year. In addition, Teixeira had flashed the kind of leather that has earned him five Gold Gloves at first base. Jacoby Ellsbury had come back from his knee injury and demonstrated that he was OK by lining out sharply to left in his first at-bat. There was comfort in knowing that closer Andrew Miller was back, too, making that one-run lead feel more secure than it really was. The only sour note, to many Yankees fans, was the presence of Drew on the field; Drew carried into the game the lowest batting average of 164 qualifying major league players, a meager .176. Never mind that he was in there for his glove, replacing the young and erratic Jose Pirela, which in a tight game could have made all the difference. Well, Drew wound up making all the difference, all right, but not with his glove. The highlight reels belonged to Teixeira, who in addition to his two home runs (Nos. 21 and 22 on the season) and two RBIs (to give him an American League-leading 61) also made three sparkling plays in the field. But the night belonged to Drew. It was his home run, after all, a solo shot in the eighth off Fernando Abad, that wound up being the margin of victory in an unexpectedly tight 5-4 Yankees win over the Oakland Athletics.  To understand how important that home run was, you first have to understand the depth of antipathy many Yankees fans feel for Drew, or at least that segment of the Yankees fan base that chooses to vent its displeasure on social media. When the Yankees announced they had reactivated Ellsbury and Miller -- but had yet to announce the corresponding roster moves to accommodate them -- many fans were tweeting that they hoped Drew would be designated for assignment, which is baseball longhand for "canned."
Fans were noting that Rob Refsnyder, a player many people have never even seen play, had two hits Wednesday in a Triple-A game for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre despite riding the bench most of the night. The implication, of course, was that Refsnyder could help the Yankees a lot more than Drew ever had. This was a belief not without a basis in fact. Through 46 games last year and 76 so far this year, Drew's batting average as a Yankee is a cumulative .168 (64-for-380). Pretty much disregarded was the fact that Drew had hit 11 home runs this season, more than all but three of his (highest-paid) teammates, and widely pooh-poohed was the stated belief of manager Joe Girardi that Drew had been hitting in uncommonly bad luck. After all, throw in his first half of 2014 with the Boston Red Sox and over his past 511 at-bats, Drew's batting average was a miserable .170. How much bad luck could one guy really have? Well, his batting average on balls in play is a team-low .166, indicating either he is hitting an inordinate number of balls right at people or he isn't hitting the ball all that hard. But belying the bad-luck theory is the fact that his line-drive percentage is a paltry 13.2 percent, lower than every other Yankee except Brendan Ryan, who has spent far more time in MRI machines, hospital beds, trainer's rooms and the DL than on the field. So it's really tough to make the case that Drew has been hitting better than his numbers. Some Yankees fans have been taking this lack of performance so personally that it seemed many of them would have gladly traded Wednesday night's win for yet another plate failure by Drew followed by the announcement that he had been shipped off the Rawlings factory for a case of rosin bags. But Drew, who is hitting .217 against left-handers but has just one home run off them, confounded his doubters in an excellent eighth-inning at-bat against the left-handed Abad. Drew fell behind 1-2, worked the count full and fouled off three pitches before getting what he called "an eephus changeup" that floated in at 67 mph and left the park a lot faster than that, clattering off the facade of the second deck in right. At the time, the home run seemed like window dressing, extending the Yankees lead to 5-2. But after a rusty Miller surrendered a two-run homer to Marcus Semien in the ninth and an error by third baseman Gregorio Petit put the tying run at second, that "superfluous" home run had suddenly become huge. "It's good. It's a good feeling," Drew said after Miller got the final out and the Yankees escaped. "I've had good at-bats and no luck. So it's a really good feeling. You never know how many runs you're going to need in a game, and tonight we needed it." The home run, of course, is hardly likely to quiet the calls for Drew's release from Yankees fans who believe Refsnyder or Pirela or anyone not named Stephen Drew is the answer. And a .179 batting average, no matter how you spin it or dress it up with advanced metrics, is not going to cut it, even if it affords Drew an outside chance of entering the MLB record books. (Assuming he plays out the rest of the season and continues to hit home runs at his current pace, Drew could break the record for home runs (25) hit by a player with a batting average under .180, a dubious mark that belongs to Rob Deer since 1991.) But for one night at least, the most disliked Yankee became the club's least likely hero. After the game, Girardi called Drew's season "strange," an assessment Drew readily agreed with. "I'm having good at-bats, swinging at good pitches and barreling the ball up, so it's very strange to say the least," Drew said. "I'm looking forward to coming into the second half. I just got to keep grinding and keep my head up, because I think now things are going to change around for me." Instead of rooting for Stephen Drew's release, maybe it's time for Yankees fans to simply start rooting for Stephen Drew.
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