Luis Garcia Jr. showing signs of heating up at perfect time for Yankees ahead of playoffs

With their playoff seed wrapped up Tuesday night, the Yankees have played four (and will have played five) games in which the results do not matter.  Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.Apart from obligation, the main point of this stretch for the club is to ensure each hitter and pitcher is feeling well at the right time.

In that way, perhaps Luis García Jr.’s effort in an otherwise meaningless nightcap of Friday’s doubleheader will matter. The slugging first baseman/DH, who has been cold for most of the month, put together some of his most encouraging at-bats in the 6-3 win over the Orioles. In the fourth inning, against righty Brandon Young, García crushed a fastball right back up the middle — 105.3 mph off the bat — right into the glove of shortstop José Barrero, which was “really good to see,” manager Aaron Boone said. After a sixth-inning walk, García grounded an RBI single up the middle against lefty Grant Wolfram in the seventh. “He’s such a good hitter that you know it’s going to come around,” Boone said.“Kind of hoping the timing of a little lull here the last 10 days or so is just in time to heat up at the right time.” Prior to the game, García — who had been so good in August after coming over from the Nationals at the trade deadline — was hitting just .224 with a .579 OPS in his first 18 September games. Perhaps most notably, he had walked once and struck out 18 times in the span. “He’s just been kind of mis-hitting some balls where it feels like he’s on time for some for the last week or 10 days,” Boone said Friday.

“Where he ends up with the lazy fly ball to the outfield, where he’s just off there a little bit.” The left-on-left at-bat against Wolfram was particularly encouraging considering the pitchers the Yankees are about to see.García is among the best bats in the game against right-h...