Yuck. The Yankees wasted one of their best starting pitcher efforts of the season and let the guy in the Orioles lineup you can’t let beat you, beat them. Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck. The final score in Tuesday’s disappointing loss to Baltimore was 2-1. New York is now 21-23 in one-run games this season. That wasn’t the plan.
Wasted Effort
The Yankees needed an ace-like performance Tuesday night and that’s exactly what Masahiro Tanaka delivered. (Despite the best efforts of the defenders on the right side of the infield.) Tanaka limited the Orioles to one run — Ryan Flaherty hit the #obligatorysolohomer, a line drive shot into the short porch — in eight innings, walking one and striking out ten. He allowed six hits, two of which didn’t leave the infield. Dominant.
Tanaka threw 69 of 104 pitches for strikes — he threw eight balls in the first three innings! — and generated 22 swings and misses, tying a career high set last season. (His previous 2015 high was 17 whiffs.) He recorded strikeouts with four different pitches: four-seamer, two-seamer, slider, and, of course, the splitter. Baltimore’s right-handed batters went a combined 1-for-14 (.071) with five strikeouts. They had no chance. Tanaka dominated. What an effort by the unquestioned staff ace.
Offensive Offense
The Yankees scored their lone run on Alex Rodriguez’s leadoff solo home run in the sixth inning, the half-inning after Flaherty took Tanaka deep. A-Rod answered right back with his 30th dinger of the year. How about that? Thirty dingers for A-Rod. The lead lasted five pitches. Unfortunately, Alex’s home run was their final hit of the game. The blast ended Gausman’s night and the O’s bullpen retired 12 of 13 batters faced. A sixth inning walk by Chris Young was the only base-runner. The final eleven Yankees made outs. None hit the ball out of the infield.
All told, the Yankees had six hits and two walks. Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann, Brendan Ryan, and A-Rod all had one single in addition to Alex’s homer. Young and McCann drew the walks. The Yankees had three at-bats with runners in scoring position and they had zero runners make it as far as third base. Just A-Rod on his homer. That’s all. The 5-6-7-8-9 hitters went a combined 1-for-18 (.056) with six strikeouts. Brutal. The Yankees now have six hits or less in four of seven games this month. That ain’t gonna cut it.
Game Over
Chris Davis came into the series having hit 21 home runs in his previous 44 games. He’s probably the best pure power hitter in baseball right now, or at least one of the top three, and the Yankees lost because Chasen Shreve threw Davis a 2-0 fastball leading off the ninth inning. It wasn’t a horrible pitch location …
… but Davis is so strong it doesn’t even matter. He put the bat on the ball and it carried out to left field. The ball just flies off Davis’ bat. Geez.
Anyway, Shreve was in the game to get the left-on-left matchup, yes, but he was in there mostly because neither Dellin Betances nor Andrew Miller were available given their recent workloads. Also, Adam Warren is needed in the rotation now too, so the bullpen was extra short on reliable relievers. The Yankees opted not to add any pitching at the deadline and now the staff is stretched thin. This was the risk they assumed.
Ryan made a brilliant diving stop at third base to turn a 5-4-3 double play in the seventh. It was unreal. The video is embedded above in case you missed it. Ryan can’t hit but boy can he field. Considering Matt Wieters followed the double play with a double off the wall, Ryan might have saved two runs there. Crazy.
The right side of the infield, meanwhile, was a total mess despite not being charged with an error. Both Didi Gregorius and Stephen Drew cut in front of each other on ground balls and couldn’t make the play. Greg Bird ranged too far off the bag not once, but twice, again resulting in base-runners. Woof. Bird’s been really shaky at first. The drop-off from Mark Teixeira is staggering. Somehow none of those miscues led to runs.
Shreve ended up allowing three hits in his inning of work, but just the one run. He’s allowed 26 of 65 base-runners to reach base since the start of August (.400 OBP). Shreve’s coming back down to Earth at a very unfortunate time. I’m not going to blame him for giving up a homer to Davis, it happens, but this underscores the team’s lack of reliable pitching depth at the moment.
And finally, Bird went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts against Gausman, his former high school teammate. Bird battled, he had a six-pitch at-bat and a five-pitch at-bat, but Gausman got the best of him. I’m guessing these two will be matching up for a few more years to come.
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Here are the box score and video highlights for the game as well as the updated standings and postseason odds for the season. The magic number to clinch a postseason spot did drop to 19 because the Twins lost to the Royals, so hooray for that. Here are our Bullpen Workload and Announcer Standings pages, and here’s the loss probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
The Yankees and Orioles will wrap up this three-game series Wednesday evening, when CC Sabathia makes what will hopefully be a triumphant return to the rotation. He’s spent the last 15 days on the DL with another knee issue. Ubaldo Jimenez will be on the bump for the O’s. RAB Tickets can get you in the door for any of the five remaining games on the homestand.
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