Yankeemetrics: Bird hunting in the Bronx (Sept. 14-17)

Dingers and runs are awesome
What happens when you combine one of the five best homer-hitting teams (Yankees) with one of the five most homer-friendly ballparks (Yankee Stadium) and one of the five most homer-prone pitching staffs (Orioles)? You get the dinger-fueled blowout that happened on Thursday night in the Bronx.

The Yankees crushed four homers and pummeled the Orioles, 13-5. It was the fifth home game that the Yankees scored at least a dozen runs – and the opponent for all five of those has been the Orioles. This is the first time in the last 100 years of major-league baseball that any team has scored 12 or more runs in five home games against a single opponent within a season.

Aaron Judge led the offensive barrage – he went 3-for-4, scored three runs, belted two homers and piled up a career-best six RBIs – and unsurprisingly continued his assault on the record books:

• The homers were his 10th and 11th against the Orioles, making him the first player on any team to hit 10 or more home runs against the Baltimore Orioles in a season (the franchise moved to Baltimore in 1954).
• Going back to the days when they were known as the St. Louis Browns, the only other Yankees with 11-plus dingers against the franchise in a season are Joe DiMaggio (three times), Lou Gehrig (twice) and Babe Ruth (twice).
• Judge is the first Yankee to hit at least 11 homers against any opponent since 1961, when Roger Maris had 13 against the White Sox and Mickey Mantle had 11 against the Senators.
• The two home runs were also his 26th and 27th in the Bronx, setting the single-season record at the new Yankee Stadium, a mark previously held by Curtis Granderson in 2012.
• Judge also now has 24 RBIs against the Orioles. Combined with his 11 longballs, he became the youngest player to reach both those totals against any team in a season since a 24-year-old Willie Mays hit 12 homers and drove in 29 runs versus the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1955.
• He scored his 110th run in the first inning, adding his name to this decent list of Yankees with at least 110 runs and 110 walks in a season: Ruth (10 times!), Mantle (six) and Gehrig (five).

Finally, lets cap it off with an #AaronJudgeFunFact: He is the youngest Yankee with at least three hits and six RBIs in a game since Yogi Berra on August 22, 1950 against the Tigers.

Gary Sanchez joined the home run derby in the sixth inning, going deep for the 31st time while setting the single-season franchise mark for homers by a player whose primary position was catcher. The 24-year-old also became the youngest backstop to hit more than 30 homers in a season since Mike Piazza for the Dodgers in 1993.

Eight is enough
Another home game against the Orioles, another blowout win. This one was a little tamer than Thursday’s explosive contest, as the Yankees won by only six runs (8-2) and had just three extra-base hits.

Didi Gregorius broke a 2-2 tie in the fifth inning with a 418-foot two-run blast, and added two sac flies, earning himself the coveted Obscure Yankeemetric of the Series award:

Only four other Yankees have hit a homer and multiple sac flies in a game (since sac flies first officially tracked in 1954) – Jorge Posada (2006), Jose Canseco (2000), Don Mattingly (1995), Bobby Murcer (1970).

The other stud in this game was, of course, Luis Severino, who cemented his Ace status with another fantastic performance. He went eight strong innings, giving up two runs on three hits while striking out seven. It was his 16th start this season with at least seven strikeouts and no more than two runs allowed, tied with Chris Sale and Corey Kluber for the most such games in the AL (through Friday’s slate).

The seven punchouts also pushed his season total to 218, becoming the youngest Yankee ever to reach that mark. He’s now tied for fifth on the franchise single-season strikeout list:

1. Ron Guidry (1978) – 248
2. Jack Chesbro (1904) – 239
3. CC Sabathia (2011) – 230
4. David Cone (1997) – 222
5. Luis Severino (2017) – 218
5. Melido Perez (1992) – 218

Holding a potent Orioles lineup to three hits and two runs is impressive on its own. But perhaps the most jaw-dropping part of his night was that he was pumping triple-digit gas in the late innings. Eight of the 23 pitches he threw in the seventh and eighth frames were clocked at 99 mph or faster. He’s now thrown 30 pitches of 99-plus mph after the sixth inning this season – which is more than twice as many (14) as the rest of all MLB starting pitchers combined!

Runs and dingers are awesome, Part II
The whipping of the O’s in the Bronx continued on Saturday with a 9-3 rout, and the victory also clinched their 25th consecutive winning season. That’s the second-longest streak in MLB history (Yankees had a winning record for 39 straight seasons from 1926-64), and nearly three times as long as the next-best active streak (Cardinals, 9)

Thanks to the nine-run outburst, the Yankees reached 150-run mark against the Orioles in their 18 matchups through Saturday. Why is that significant? It is the …

• Most runs scored by any team against another team during the Expansion Era (since 1961).
• Yankees ninth consecutive game with at least six runs against the O’s; since 1913, their only other longer six-plus-run scoring streak against any team was a 12-game stretch vs. the Indians in 1930.
• Yankees sixth home game in a row scoring eight or more runs against the Orioles, their longest such streak against any opponent at Yankee Stadium (old or new).

Didi Gregorius opened the slugfest with a three-run shot in the third inning, his second straight game he homered with two men on base. He joined Frankie Crossetti (1932) as the only Yankee shortstops in the Live Ball era (since 1920) to hit a three-run homer in back-to-back games. [He added another homer in Sunday’s finale, bringing his total to 24 this season, and tying Derek Jeter (1999) for the most by a shortstop in franchise history.]

All good things … must come to an end
You knew the Yankees recent trend of bashing baseballs and breaking scoreboards was unsustainable (see Regression to the Mean), and that it came in a game started by Sonny Gray was hardly surprising (see Lowest Run Support among Yankee Starters).

But the fact that the Yankees were finally cooled off by Ubaldo Jimenez — and his 6.75 ERA — in Sunday’s 6-4 loss was shocking. The Yankees entered the game 12-3 when facing an opposing starter with an ERA over 6.00, the second-best such record in the majors behind the Dodgers (9-2). So, of course, Jimenez held the Yankees to one run over five innings while striking out 10. More #WeirdBaseball? Ubaldo joined Matt Moore (Sept. 22, 2011) as the only pitchers in the last 100 years with double-digit strikeouts in an outing of five or fewer innings against the Yankees.

But wait, there’s even more!

You also couldn’t have predicted their ridiculous scoring spree to be snapped by any Orioles pitcher, given how much the Yankees had pounded the entire O’s pitching staff this season and especially in the Bronx. First, the ridiculous totals from the 19-game season series and the 10 home games vs the Orioles:

If you’re curious, Babe Ruth owns a slugging percentage of .690 and homered once every 11.7 at-bats in his career — which looks alot like the .671 slugging and 11.3 at-bat-per-homer rate that the Yankees put up against the Orioles in the Bronx this season. And now for the historical perspective on those numbers:

• 154 runs overall are the most by the Yankees vs any team in a season series since 1956, when they scored 158 in 22 games against the A’s.
• 46 homers overall are the most by any team against any single opponent in the Expansion Era, and are the second-most hit by the Yankees against a single team in franchise history (48 in 1956 against the A’s).
• .575 slugging percentage overall is their second-highest in a season against any team in the last 100 years (min. 7 games), trailing the .578 mark vs. the Rangers in 1998.
• 102 runs at home are the third-most Yankees have scored at Yankee Stadium (old or new) against an opponent (104 vs Browns in 1949, 108 vs White Sox in 1931).
• 32 homers at home are the most hit by the Yankees against a single team within a season at either Yankee Stadium.