That was close to a perfect win. Score a whole bunch of runs early, get a quality outing from the starter, then let the bullpen finish it off without making things interesting. Just perfect. The Yankees did all of that in Saturday night’s 8-2 win over the Angels. New York has won five straight and nine of their last dozen games overall.
First Inning Offense
Coming into Saturday’s game, the Yankees led all of baseball with 51 first inning runs. It wasn’t close either — the Padres were a distant second with 42 runs. The Tigers (41) were the only other team with more than 38. The Yankees dominate the first inning and they did it again Saturday, scoring six runs and knocking the generally awesome Garrett Richards out of the game after two-thirds of an inning. Let’s recap the inning with annotated play-by-play:
(1) The first at-bat of the inning told us right away that home plate ump Alfonso Marquez was going to have a tight strike zone. At least two of those balls to Brett Gardner looked like strikes, and that was a common theme throughout the inning. Marquez squeezed, Richards had to come over the plate, and the Yankees made him pay. The zone was tight for both teams but the Yankees did a better job of capitalizing. Here’s the strike zone. Notice how nearly every borderline pitch was called a ball:
(2) Chase Headley’s single maybe possibly could have been a double play. It was a hot shot grounder second baseman Johnny Giavotella couldn’t handle, and it deflected off his glove and into shallow right field. It was a tough play, no doubt about it. With a little luck Giavotella could have had his glove up quicker, fielded the hopper, and gotten at least one out (if not two), changing the inning. That didn’t happen. The ball clanked off his glove and the Yankees were in business.
(3) Richards recorded one out among the first eight batters he faced, and that was a 400-foot fly ball to the center field warning track. I didn’t think it was gone off the bat — it looked like Mark Teixeira hit it juuust off the end of the bat — but it kept carrying and carrying before Mike Trout settled under it. That was the second hardest hit ball of the inning behind Brian McCann’s two-run home run, which was another example of Richards getting squeezed, having to come over the plate, and the Yankees capitalizing.
(4) Low baseball IQ alert! Stephen Drew hit a soft chopper to first base, and for some reason Albert Pujols tried to catch Didi Gregorius wandering off second base rather than take the sure out at first in hopes of snuffing out the big inning. Pujols made the throw to Giavotella, Gregorius slid back in, and second base ump Tom Hallion called him out. The Yankees immediately challenged and the replays clearly showed that not only did Didi beat the tag, there wasn’t even a tag applied. Giavotella tagged his own leg, not Gregorius. The call was overturned, Didi was ruled safe, and the Yankees reloaded the bases on a boneheaded play by Pujols, arguably the greatest player of his generation and usually a pretty smart defender.
(5) I thought Gardner’s two-out, two-run single was a back-breaker. Four runs in the first inning is awesome! But if Gardner makes an out there, Richards probably stays in the game, the Angels stay within grand slam distance, and a really good first inning doesn’t make the jump to a great first inning. Tacking on those two extra runs rather than “settling” for the four-run frame was huge. Changed the complexion of the game completely.
(6) This was already the fourth time this season the Yankees scored 5+ runs in the first inning. They did it twice last year, zero times the year before that, and twice the year before that. The other 29 teams have done it three times combined this season (!). This was also New York’s sixth inning of 5+ runs this season in general (first inning, second inning, whatever) compared to nine last year and eight the year before that. Hooray big innings!
Warren Report
It’ll get forgotten thanks to the big day by the offense, but Adam Warren turned in yet another very strong outing, holding the Angels to two runs in 6.2 innings. He threw a career high 105 pitches. After struggling to get through even five innings earlier this season, Warren has now completed at least 6.1 innings in each of his last five starts. He’s the first Yankee with five straight starts of 6.1+ innings since Masahiro Tanaka early last season. Who’d a thunk it?
Anyway, Warren retired the first nine batters he faced, then five of nine batters reached base the second time through the lineup. The Angels loaded the bases with an infield single and two walks in the fourth inning, so they were threatening to make it a game, but Warren was able to coax an inning-ending double play ball out of David Freese. The Halos then put the first two runners on in the fifth before Warren rebounded and limited the damage to one run on a sac fly. It was a long sac fly — Ramon Flores caught it at the wall — but it was just a sac fly.
Trout hit a solo home run in the sixth because that’s what Mike Trout does. What are you gonna do? The guy hits dingers. Luckily there was no one on base when it happened. Warren’s night ended when he walked Giavotella with two outs in the seventh — he actually had more walks (three) than strikeouts (two) on the night — but it didn’t come back to hurt. Justin Wilson retired Erick Aybar with one pitch to end the inning. Although Warren wasn’t as sharp on Saturday as he has been in recent weeks, this was his fifth straight quality outing nonetheless. Well done, Adam.
Leftovers
The Yankees scored an insurance run in the second (Carlos Beltran singled in Teixeira) and another in the eighth (Teixeira walked with the bases loaded). The offense actually went kinda silent for a while — between Beltran’s single in the second and the start of the eighth inning, Angels pitchers retired 17 of 20 batters faced. The three base-runners were Gregorius (double) and A-Rod (walk, hit-by-pitch). Huh. Go figure.
Every starter reached base safely at least once other than Drew, though Drew reached on that weird Pujols play in the first. (It was scored a fielder’s choice.) Gardner (two singles, walk), A-Rod (three walks, hit-by-pitch), Teixeira (single, walk), McCann (homer, single), and Gregorius (single, double) all reached base multiple times. Gardner also stole a base because why not? The Yankees have been getting contributions from up and down the lineup during this five-game winning steak. Nice to see.
Unlike the series opener, the bullpen did not make things interesting in the late innings. Justin Wilson escaped the seventh, allowed a single in an otherwise uneventful eighth, and Chris Capuano retired the side in order in the ninth. Carlos Perez did work a 13-pitch at-bat before making the 27th out though. But see? It doesn’t have to be so hard with a huge late lead.
And finally, the Angels really had to tax their bullpen thanks to the short start by Richards. Cesar Ramos (20 pitches), Hector Santiago (45 pitches), Jose Alvarez (24 pitches), and Cam Bedrosian (40 pitches) all had to work quite a bit. That figures to play a role in the series finale Sunday.
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Here are the box score, video highlights, updated standings, Bullpen Workload page, and Announcer Standings page. Here’s the win probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
The Yankees and Angels will wrap up this series on Sunday afternoon. CC Sabathia, not Michael Pineda, will square off against fellow left-hander C.J. Wilson. Pineda is having his scheduled start skipped this week to control his workload. Head over to RAB Tickets if you want to catch that game or either of the other two remaining games on the homestand in person.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.