Four hours later, the Yankees and Orioles finally played. The first pitch was thrown until 11:08pm ET on Tuesday night, the final pitch at 2:16am on Wednesday morning, and in between there was a whole lotta grounds crew shenanigans. Drying agent, puddles on the warning track, more drying agent, outfielders slipping, all of that and more. The whole game was a complete mess. Let’s quickly recap…
- Jorge Posada opened the scoring with a solo homer in the third, the third straight long ball hit by the Yankees DH’s. It might have been the last homer Posada ever hits at Yankee Stadium. Hell, it might be the last homer he hits ever. Crazy. Their second run scored with the help of the elements, when Jorge chugging all the way around from first after Matt Angle dropped Frankie Cervelli’s fly ball to the warning track in left. The wind knocked it down, otherwise it would have been Frankie’s third homer in the last week. Now that is crazy.
- Phil Hughes pitched fine for the first five-plus innings, but he gave up the lead when Matt Wieters hit a two-run homer to left. Cervelli called for the high fastball in the 0-2 count, Hughes threw the high fastball in the 0-2 count, and Wieters hit it out of the park in the 0-2 count. Seemed like a very weird pitch to call for at the time, but whatever. Otherwise, two runs across six innings is perfectly fine from the fifth starter.
- The Yankees retook the lead the very next half inning, when Derek Jeter singled, Curtis Granderson walked (on a 3-2 pitch right down the middle, terrible call by the ump), and Mark Teixeira singled. Tex’s shot was one of those “he hit it so hard it was just a single” numbers. The Orioles re-tied it in the next half inning when Nick Markakis doubled home Robert Andino off LNOGY Boone Logan.
- A half inning after that happened, things got weird. I mean really weird. Cervelli hit another rocket to left, and this one was ruled a homer after a fan appeared to reach over the fence to catch the ball. The umps reviewed it, and bam, the homer stood. That makes it four would-be homers over the last week. Because that’s not enough, Brett Gardner jumped all over a 3-0 fastball and clanked it off the right field foul pole for the second of back-to-back jacks. Cervelli and Gardner have no business hitting back-to-back homers, but we were well within the bounds of #weirdbaseball by that point. Fair game.
- Once that all got sorted out, David Robertson pitched a scoreless eight and Mariano Rivera shut things down in the ninth for his 598th career save. He’s getting closer to the all-time record (601) by the day. The Red Sox won and the Rays lost about an hour before this game even started, so the Yankees remained 2.5 games up in the division and moved to 10.5 up for the wildcard. The magic number to clinch a playoff spot dropped to just 12. Here’s the box score, here’s the FanGraphs stats, and here’s the standings.
If you were supposed to go to the game, or even if you did go and stuck around all night, you’ll get a free ticket to a non-premium game next season. So hooray for that, I’m sure it’ll make up for the pneumonia. Anyway, these two teams are supposed to play again at 1pm ET on Wednesday, but there’s little chance of that happening since it’s going to keep raining. Expect another long delay. Whenever they start that one, it’ll be A.J. Burnett and Zach Britton on the bump.
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