It was a good-looking Shane Baz that greeted New York tonight. Not only did the O’s starter make a big first impression, striking out three Yankees in the first inning (and on three different pitches!—curveball, heater, changeup), he also pinched into the seventh and struck out a season-high ten batters.
Alas, as my colleague Paul Folkemer put it in his preview of this series, through no fault of his own, Baz has been something of a bad-luck charm for this Orioles offense, and tonight, it was like that again. In total, the Birds managed just four hits (all but one singles). They scored just once, on a Coby Mayo solo homer (his second four-bagger in two nights), instead going 0-for-6 as a team with runners in scoring position, with seven men left on.
There’s probably blame to be allotted for the bad hitting, but let’s start with cheers for the good pitching. The box score says Shane Baz gave us 6 1/3 innings and three earned runs, but this is largely due to a Josh Walker stumble in the seventh. I’ll be darned if Baz didn’t look much better than that. So let’s give him his deserved kudos.
Baz whiffed the first three Yankees hitters he saw, plus two more in the second. It was a ruthless beginning. Four of his first five outs were by K. The fastball was zippy, the sinker was running, and the knuckle curve was unhittable.
For six innings, Baz made just one mistake, a hung changeup to leadoff man Trent Grisham, who somehow was well out front of the offspeed pitch, put a weird swing on it, and still managed to send it to the flag court. Baseball is full of random things like that, but seeing how the two starters looked it was a real surprise, truthfully, that the Yankees had struck first.
Lefty Carlos Rodón is a three-time All Star and has finished in the top six of the Cy Young voting three times. But he’s dealt with elbow soreness all year, and this was his first start back since June 28. Tonight, his command was off, as you might expect. Yet his changing of speeds kept the Orioles off-balanced over a short stint of just four innings, and the Orioles, who posted just two hits off him, didn’t take advantage of his slight wildness.
The only Oriole who seemed to like hitting Rodón tonight was Coby Mayo, the young slugger who’s kind of come into his own in the back half of the season. In the first inning, with Tyler O’Neill aboard and two outs, Mayo put a charge into one, but it only traveled 382 feet to deep center, not 468 into the second deck like the other day.
Jumping ahead to the bottom of the third, Mayo got a chance to do it again, and this time, he broke through. It was looking at this point like Rodón was heating up, starting to land the sinker against right-handers. But he threw one that didn’t sink to Mayo, who is OPS’ing 1.053 against lefties this year. Mayo launched it into the left-field corner, and from behind home plate Pat Sajak and Cal Ripken Jr. exchanged a celebratory handshake (cool, if random).
It was unfortunate that that was all the Birds could do against Rodón, a great pitcher who didn’t have his best stuff working tonight. Ultimately, yet another great Baz outing got wasted again.
Baz skated through four, already up to eight strikeouts. He had a bit of trouble in the fifth—Leody Taveras’ running grab in center staved off a leadoff double or something, and he put on two runners with a single and a walk. But then the Yankees’ catcher, Wells, popped out to Mayo, who looked happy to be starting at first base today. Baz threw Trent Grisham a curveball, but the Yankees’ centerfielder skied it to an easygoing Christian Franklin out in left. Baz was through seven with just two hits and eight strikeouts allowed.
The O’s right-hander rolled through the sixth with two easy ground balls, plus his ninth strikeout. But then came the seventh, and a flawed end to his night. After 90-odd pitches, it looked a little like Baz was tiring, and two Yankees rookies made him pay: Spencer Jones singled on a hanging knuckle curve, one of the few Baz offerings that did (hang). Then, with one out, George Lombard Jr. singled the other way, and O’s skipper Craig Albernaz came out to give a pissed-off Baz the hook. Baz agreed, however, and Oriole Park got up to give him a deserved standing O.
Albernaz called on lefty Josh Walker (2.81 ERA, 13 SO in 16 IP) to clean up the mess. Alas, dear reader, he wouldn’t clean up the mess. Facing pinch-hitting righty Paul Goldschmidt, the Mark Hamill-esque Walker missed with a couple of balls inside, and the Yankees had the bases loaded, with one out. It was a stressful, crackling moment. It nearly worked. Walker retired pinch hitter Amed Rosario on strikes: two outs. He went to 2-2 against leadoff hitter Trent Grisham, but alas, Walker left a sinker down the middle, and Grisham singled home two runs. It was now 3-1 New York, and now you know, these were the winning runs. Baz, sitting in the dugout, looked like he was trying not to be sick. Getting worse before he got better, Walker hit a batter, and fell down 3-0 to Heliot Ramos. But he got himself out of the inning with three straight fastballs. Ramos went down swinging, and the Yankees had left the bases loaded.
It would have been great if any of this had mattered. The O’s still needed two runs to get back in the game, and regrettably, those never came. New York brought in a lefty, Brent Headrick, to pitch the eighth, and the O’s wasted their best scoring chance in a while. They put the first two hitters on: Leody Taveras singled, and Christian Franklin, playing in just his 13th major league game, worked an excellent ten-pitch walk. But I’m sorry to say, there’d be no more runs: a pinch-hitting Jeremiah Jackson struck out. Holliday flew out. And Pete Alonso hit one on the screws, but into the glove of the Yankees’ right fielder.
Like I said, the O’s went 0-for-6 with RISP tonight. They looked particularly useless against sinkerballers, which includes Paul Blackburn and David Bednar, both righties, who pitched risk-free eighth and ninth innings for New York.
One of those games. As of now, the Orioles playoff hopes are far from dashed, but on nights like these you really have to squint to see a dangerous lineup.