The Orioles are no longer the only undefeated in baseball. The Yankees rallied in the late innings for a 7-3 win in Sunday afternoon’s series finale. They needed that. I think fans needed it more.
Six Solid From Sabathia
For the first time this season, the Yankees had a starter record an out after the fifth inning. Three outs, in fact. CC Sabathia chucked six workmanlike innings Sunday afternoon, holding the Orioles to three runs on six hits and four walks. He struck out three and threw 98 pitches. Pretty? No way. Effective? Yeah, effective enough. Starts like this have become the norm for Sabathia at this point of his career.
Also the norm for Sabathia at this point of his career: weak contact. He was second among all starters in soft contact rate (24.0%) and first in average exit velocity (85.3 mph) last season. We saw that again Sunday. I’m not sure any of the six hits Sabathia allowed were well-struck. Most were soft liners to the shallow outfield. The O’s scored their first run on a Chris Carter misplay — they had runners on the corners with one out, Sabathia got the weak grounder to first, and for some reason Carter threw to second rather than throwing home. Mark Trumbo was running and Carter had a clear lane to throw and plenty of time, yet he threw to second. I do not understand.
That all happened in the second inning to give the Orioles a 1-0 lead. They scored another run later that inning on J.J. Hardy’s (yup) soft single to right, then, in the fifth, Trumbo gave the O’s a 3-0 lead with another soft single, this one to center field. For some reason the Yankees had their outfielders deep all afternoon. I know the O’s have a lot of power, but maybe bring them in a few steps when Sabathia is pitching? He gives up a ton of those soft line drive singles in front of the outfielders.
Off The Hook
Orioles starter Wade Miley came out and walked four of the first eight, and six of the first 12 (!) batters he faced Sunday, and the Yankees let him off the hook. None of those walks runs scored. There’s two ways you can look at that, I suppose. One, the Yankees are terrible and they didn’t capitalize on the walks because the offense stinks. Or two, Miley was never around the plate, so the Yankees didn’t get anything to hit. I’m feeling optimistic after this win, so I’ll go with the latter.
Matt Holliday worked a two-out walk in the first inning, then was immediately erased on a pickoff. Holliday wasn’t going anywhere, Miley just has a really great move and got him. So it goes. Miley then walked the bases loaded in the second inning, only to have Ronald Torreyes bail him out with what was easily the worst at-bat of the day:
That purple dot way outside the zone? That’s the one Torreyes swung at for strike three. He looked like a young kid trying to hit a five-run homer in a big spot. Miley threw a purpleball out of the zone and got him swinging to escape the jam. Nine batters, four walks, no runs through two innings.
It wasn’t until there were two outs in the fifth inning that the Yankees recorded their first hit. Aaron Hicks managed to find a hole back up the middle with a hard-hit ground ball. Miley threw away a pickoff throw and walked Holliday one last time for good measure before getting out of the inning. His final line: 5 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 7 BB, 5 K. Good grief. Amazingly, this is the second time Miley has walked seven and not allowed a run in his career. He did it back in 2013 as well. The last time someone did that against the Yankees was 2000. Dan Reichert walked nine in eight scoreless innings at Yankee Stadium. The 2000 Yankees had no heart!
The Comeback
Fighting Spirit! Turns out all the Yankees had to do to score some runs Sunday was get the pitcher who was walking everyone out of the game. In the sixth inning the Yankees struck for two runs with two outs courtesy of a Torreyes triple. That second inning at-bat was terrible. No doubt about it. Torreyes made up for it with the two-run triple in the sixth. Aaron Judge and Austin Romine strung together back-to-back singles to set that two-out rally up.
The Torreyes triple brought the Yankees to within 3-2. They tied the game 3-3 in the eighth inning, on Judge’s first home run of the season. It came in a two-strike count too. The at-bat went called strike, ball, called strike, ball, foul, dinger. I’m pretty sure Judge got it off the end of the bat too. He definitely didn’t square it up:
The comeback did not end there. This wasn’t one of those “rally to tie the game but lose anyway” games. The Yankees struck for four runs in the top of the ninth inning and boy oh boy did the Orioles help them out. The inning started with Holliday’s fifth walk of the day. Fifth! He’s the first Yankee to draw five walks in a game since Mark Teixeira back in 2009. Jacoby Ellsbury pinch-ran and stole second, though it didn’t really matter because Carter walked as the next batter. Carter’s walk was the team’s tenth of the day. Ten walks. Geez.
Based on that ninth inning, Darren O’Day is bad now. Remember when he used to chew up Alex Rodriguez? He couldn’t buy an out in that ninth inning. Following the back-to-back walks, O’Day left a pitch up that Starlin Castro sent back up the middle for a go-ahead single. Ellsbury crossed the plate to give the Yankees a 4-3 lead. They didn’t stop there either. Chase Headley drew yet another walk to load the bases with no outs. The Yankees had the lead and they were in business.
Judge, who tied the game in the eighth inning, drove in an insurance run with a weak ground ball to first base. Chris Davis scooped it and was readying to throw home for the force, but he tripped over his own feet and tumbled to the grass. He recovered in time to get the out at first, but the run was in. It’s about time the Yankees scored a run like that. We’ve seen them make some hilarious errors already this year. This was the first time they benefited from one.
The Judge grounder pushed the lead to 5-3. Romine made it 7-3 with a two-run sac fly. He hit the ball deep to right field, deep enough for Headley to tag up from second and go to third, and the throw eluded Manny Machado. It hopped into foul territory, far enough away that Headley was able to chug home. Back-to-back silly plays to score runs. Yay. Aroldis Chapman slammed the door in the ninth inning. Judge made a diving catch for the 27th out. Love this team, you guys.
Leftovers
All told, the Yankees drew eleven walks in this game. It’s the first time they’ve walked eleven times in a nine-inning game since, well, last September. I thought it would be a much longer time ago. Holliday had the five walks and Carter had two. Brett Gardner, Headley, Judge, and Romine had the others. The Yankees had eleven walks Sunday after drawing 16 walks total in their first five games of the season.
The 7-8-9 hitters (Judge, Romine, Torreyes) went a combined 6-for-12 with a triple, a homer, two walks, and one strikeout. Very nice production from the bottom of the lineup. Gardner went 0-for-5 with a walk and three strikeouts. He was the only Yankee to hit safely in each of the first five games this season. In the ninth inning, after Pete Kozma pinch-ran for Carter, Joe Girardi opted to slide Headley over to first rather than use Greg Bird. Bird is nursing an ankle issue and he’s sick. Seems like he wasn’t available at all today.
The unsung heroes: Tyler Clippard and Dellin Betances. Six up, six down for those two in the seventh and eighth innings, paving the way for the comeback. Clippard faced the top of the lineup — Machado took a big ol’ hack in a 3-0 count and hit a ball to the warning track, which was scary — while Betances handled the middle, including Trumbo and Davis. Nice work holding the O’s down those two innings.
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Head over to ESPN for the box score and MLB.com for the video highlights. ESPN has the standings, if you’re paying attention to them already. (It’s too early.) Also, don’t miss our Bullpen Workload page. Here’s the win probability graph. It’s nice to see one of these bend in favor of the Yankees for a change.
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
The home opener, finally. Glad to have baseball back in the Bronx. The Yankees open the Yankee Stadium portion of their schedule Monday afternoon against the Rays. That’s a 1pm ET start. Michael Pineda and Alex Cobb are the scheduled pitchers. Head over to RAB Tickets if you want to go to that game, or any other game on the nine-game homestand.
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