Katie Sharp, Author at River Avenue Blues

Yankeemetrics: April 27-29 (Rays)

April 30, 2015 by Katie Sharp 91 Comments

Two out of three ain't bad. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images) — Two out of three ain’t bad. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

Miller time
After beating the Rays in their series opener, the Yankees claimed sole possession of first place in the AL East for the first time in nearly a year. Good job, guys!

Brian McCann notched the game-winning hit with a tie-breaking solo homer in the sixth inning. It was his 25th homer as a Yankee, with 21 of those coming at Yankee Stadium. He is the first player in franchise history to hit more than 20 of his first 25 homers as a Yankee at home, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

The bullpen continued to do awesome things, holding the Rays without a run after Adam Warren left in the sixth inning. Dellin Betances pitched a perfect eighth inning, extending his streak of games with no hits allowed and at least two strikeouts to five. That’s something no Yankee pitcher has ever done in the last 100 years.

Andrew Miller — the non-closer — notched his eighth save in eight chances, becoming the first Yankee with at least eight saves in the team’s first 20 games. The last left-handed reliever on any team to get at least eight saves this early into the season was Eddie Guardado for the Twins in 2002.

Hi Jake, I’m Brian
The Yankees notched their fourth series win a row with a 4-2 victory over the Rays on Tuesday night. It also gave them a 10-2 record in their last 12 games, something they didn’t even come close to doing last season. Their best 12-game stretch in 2014 included a mere eight wins.

It was not surprising that McCann again delivered the big hits for the Yankees in this game, with two run-scoring doubles that drove in three of the team’s four runs. He continued his absolute ownership of Jake Odorizzi, going 2-for-3 against the Rays starter. That made him 10-for-16 with three doubles, a triple and two homers in his career against Odorizzi, by far his best batting average (.625) and slugging percentage (1.960) against any pitcher he’s faced at least 10 times.

Chris Martin subbed in for the non-closer Andrew Miller and closed out the win with a scoreless ninth inning for his first career save. Martin is the 15th player in major-league history at 6-foot-8 or taller to record a save. The Yankees have seemingly cornered the market on these tall relievers — five of those 15 have at least one career save with the franchise. The others are Dellin Betances, Jeff Nelson, Graeme Lloyd and Lee Guetterman.

K-Rod
On Wednesday afternoon the Rays managed to do something they hadn’t done all season – beat the Yankees. All good things have to come to an end, right?

Ultimately, the difference in this game was that the Rays had a couple more timely hits than the Yankees, as James Loney singled in the winning run with two men on base in the top of the 13th inning. Prior to that hit, the Rays were 3-for-42 (.071!) with runners in scoring position against the Yankees this season.

Alex Rodriguez might have had his worst day at the plate in his entire career. Not only did he ground into a game-ending double play, but he also struck out four times and was hitless in six at-bats. It was the first time he’s ever gone 0-for-6 or worse in a game in his 21 major-league seasons. It also marked the only time he’s grounded into a double play and had four strikeouts in the same game.

Michael Pineda wasn’t as dominant as he was in his last outing against the Mets, but still ended up with a respectable pitching line (5 2/3 IP, 2 R, 5 K, 0 BB) and kept the Yankees in the game. While his season ERA isn’t spectacular (3.73), his peripherals (32 strikeouts, two walks) are simply ridiculous.

He is just the third major-league pitcher in the last 100 years with that many strikeouts (32) and two or fewer walks in the month of April, joining Juan Marichal (1968) and Cliff Lee (2008). The only other Yankee to post those numbers in any calendar month was Hiroki Kuroda in September of last season.

How Betances became dominant Dellin again

April 28, 2015 by Katie Sharp 188 Comments

I'm back and better than before. (Presswire) — I’m back and better than before. (Presswire)

One week into the season, and Dellin Betances was a mess. After three games, he had allowed only one run (unearned) but his lack of command was alarming. Betances issued two walks in each of his first three outings (six total) and struck out a combined three batters in those 3 1/3 innings. This was from a guy that in the final two months of last season faced 101 batters and walked four of them.

It was very small sample size, but following a spring where he also struggled with his mechanics and his control, he was facing questions about whether he’d be able to replicate his brilliant 2014 campaign and what had happened to his dominant stuff from one year ago. He had established himself as one of the league’s elite relievers in 2014, but at the start of 2015 he looked completely lost on the mound.

Fast-forward two weeks and the perception of Betances among the media and fans couldn’t be any different.

Dellin is dealing! Betances is back!

His last seven games, starting with an April 15 outing in Baltimore, look like this: eight innings, 28 batters faced, one walk, 14 strikeouts, two singles allowed. He has five straight appearances with no hits allowed and at least two strikeouts, the first Yankee pitcher in the last 100 years with a streak like that. Any questions?

Now that Betances appears to have put to rest any of those silly notions that last year’s incredible performance was a fluke, let’s take a deeper look at what exactly changed for the 27-year-old flamethrower in the past two weeks.

Location, location, location
Simply put, his biggest problem during that rocky start to the season was that he had no idea where the ball was going in those first three games. Only one out of every three pitches he threw was in the strike zone, a shockingly low rate compared to both the league average (47 percent) and last season’s number (52 percent). This is what that looks like in heat-map form, with last year on the left and his first three games from this year on the right:

You can sometimes get away with expanding the zone if you can also get hitters to chase those out-of-zone pitches. But that wasn’t the case with Betances during the first week.

His location was so bad — even in that small sample — that hitters had an easy plan when they came to the plate against Betances: don’t swing. In those first three games, batters swung at just 31 percent of his pitches, one of the lowest rates by any pitcher in the first week. As a result, he quickly dug himself into a hole in nearly every at-bat, throwing a first-pitch ball to 12 of the 18 batters he faced.

Behind in the count early and often during those first three outings, Betances was reluctant to unleash his devastating curveball, which allowed batters to sit on his fastball and wait for a hittable pitch or simply take a walk.

The key to his turnaround
Since bottoming out on April 13 against the Orioles when he allowed four baserunners and threw just 10 of his 24 pitches for strikes, Betances has done a complete 360-turnaround. He’s regained his command, throwing more than half of his pitches in the zone.

Now that Betances has found the strike zone again, he’s consistently getting ahead and quickly gaining the advantage in the at-bat. Over the last seven games, he’s started 17 of the 28 batters with an 0-1 count and 12 of those 17 plate appearances ended in a strikeout. That’s much better!

A key change in his mechanics related to this improved control is that he’s tightened up the release point on both his curveball and fastball, as you can see in the GIF below (the more spread-out series of dots is the first three games; the more condensed series is the past seven games).

With a more consistent throwing motion, he’s now able to command his pitches better and his curveball/fastball combo also looks nearly identical to batters when coming out of his hand, making it harder for hitters to distinguish between the two pitches. The results: batters are swinging at a higher rate overall (41 percent), and more importantly, he’s more than doubled his percentage of out-of-zone swings from 16 percent in the first week to 38 percent over the last two weeks.

In addition to the improved location, Betances’ stuff is now looking much more like what he threw last year. Not only has his average fastball velocity increased to 97-plus mph in his most recent outings, but the horizontal movement on his curve has risen more than inch in the last two weeks compared to the first week of the season.

It seems like Betances has finally put himself back together on the mound and is rounding into his 2014 All-Star form. He’s more confident, throwing better pitches and appears to be settling in as the dominant reliever that we saw on a nightly basis last year. If Betances can maintain his mechanics and command of the strike zone through the remainder of the season, he’ll once again be a late-inning weapon that Joe Girardi can use in high-leverage situations and help the Yankees bullpen keep its status as one of the best in the league.

Yankeemetrics: April 24-26 (Mets)

April 27, 2015 by Katie Sharp 103 Comments

Streak-busters
The two hottest teams in baseball met in the Bronx on Friday night but only one left the stadium with their win streak intact. The Yankees handed the Mets their first loss in 12 games and won their fourth game in a row, taking the opener of the first-ever edition of the Subway Series between two first-place teams.

Mark Teixeira provided nearly all of the offense, hitting two homers and driving in four of the Yankees six runs. He joined Tony Clark (2004) as the only Yankee first baseman with a multi-homer game against the Mets.

Following Friday’s game, Tex had 12 hits and 11 of those were for extra bases (seven homers, four doubles). According to the Elias Sports Bureau, he is just the second player since 1900 that had at least 11 extra base hits among his first 12 hits of the season. Adam Dunn did it for the Reds in 2005.

Michael Pineda delivered an ace-like performance, allowing one run on five hits while pitching into the eighth inning. He pounded the strike zone all night, throwing 78 of his 100 pitches for strikes. That is a career-high number of strikes for Pineda, and also the highest strike percentage (min. 100 pitches) by any Yankee pitcher since Randy Johnson threw 86 strikes among his 110 pitches (78.2 percent) on June 16, 2005 against the Pirates.

Large Lefty comes up small
Coming off a vintage performance against the Tigers (8 IP, 2 R) and facing a team he has dominated in his career (2.14 ERA in five starts), CC Sabathia entered Saturday’s matchup vs. the Mets looking to clinch the series for the Yankees. Instead, he had his worst outing of the season and fell to 0-4 in four starts this year.

Sabathia is the second Yankee in the last 30 years to lose his first four starts of the season. Kevin Brown also went 0-4 in his first four outings of the 2005 season. The last Yankee southpaw to do it was Fritz Peterson in 1972. Sabathia also extended his winless streak to seven starts dating back to last year, the longest such drought of his career.

The lone highlight for the Yankees was once again Teixeira, who went 3-for-4 and clubbed another homer. That gave him eight home runs in the team’s first 18 games, a feat achieved by only five other Yankees: Alex Rodriguez (2007), Graig Nettles (1974), Mickey Mantle (1956, 1961), Yogi Berra (1956), Babe Ruth (1921).

Matt Harvey dominated the Yankees lineup for the second time in two career starts against the team he rooted for as a kid growing up in Connecticut. He is one of two pitchers in the last 100 years with at least eight innings pitched, seven strikeouts and no more than two runs allowed in each of his first two career games against the Yankees. The other is Ray Culp, who did it for the Red Sox in 1968.

What a relief
The Yankees earned bragging rights in New York City with a 6-4 victory on Sunday night, giving them the Subway Series win. The hero of the game was the bullpen, which threw 4 2/3 scoreless, hitless innings after starter Nathan Eovaldi got rocked by the Mets.

Andrew Miller, the team’s fifth reliever of the game, closed out the win with a scoreless ninth inning for his seventh save of the season in seven tries. Since saves became an official statistic in 1969, he is now the first pitcher to convert his first seven save chances in a Yankee uniform, without allowing more than one hit in each of those games.

This was not a pretty game from a defensive standpoint. The Mets committed four errors in the game, the most they’ve ever had in a game against the Yankees, and the home team also committed two errors. The six combined errors is one shy of the record for a Subway Series game, set on May 20, 2006 when the Yankees had four and the Mets had three.

Alex Rodriguez drove in the Yankees first run with his 659th career homer. So when’s he gonna hit the next one to tie Willie Mays for fourth on the all-time list? Facing the pressure of reaching a couple other milestones, he went 51 plate appearances between No. 599 and 600, and 37 plate appearances between No. 499 and 500.

Yankeemetrics: April 20-23 (Tigers)

April 24, 2015 by Katie Sharp 157 Comments

Good times in Motown. Photo credit: Associated Press)

Don’t blame CC
The Yankees wasted a dominant pitching performance by CC Sabathia in the opening game of the series, losing 2-1 to the Tigers on Monday night. Sabathia, who faced the minimum number of hitters through six innings, went the distance and allowed just two runs on seven hits.

Sabathia ended up losing for the third time in three starts this season, despite not having given up more than four earned runs in any of those outings. Bad luck? He is the first Yankee to lose his first three games of the season, allowing four-or-fewer earned runs in each game, since Fritz Peterson and Mel Stottlemyre both had streaks like that to begin the 1972 season.

While the loss was painful, at least it was over quickly. The game last two hours, 20 minutes, the second time this season the Yankees have played a game in less than two-and-a-half hours. The only other year since 2000 that they played multiple sub-2:30 games within their first 13 games was 2003.

Two outs are better than one
Nathan Eovaldi pitched seven innings of one-run ball on Tuesday to pick up his first win in pinstripes (he was wearing road greys, I know).

Like Sabathia in the first game, Nate the Great was helped out by an infield defense that converted four double plays behind him. This was the first time that Yankee starters generated at least three GIDPs in back-to-back games since Fritz Peterson and Mel Stottlemyre (them again!) on April 14 and 15, 1973.

Chris Young continued to swing a hot bat, going 3-for-3 with two walks and fell a triple short of the cycle. Before Young, the last Yankee right fielder to reach base at least five times, make no outs and hit a home run in a game was Shane Spencer on August 7, 1998 against the Royals.

Snow is the Yankees best friend
The winter-like forecast for Wednesday night’s game couldn’t cool down the Yankee bats, as they routed the Tigers 13-4 and pushed their record over .500 (8-7) for the first time this season.

Jacoby Ellsbury picked up his first RBI of the year in the Yankees six-run first inning, ending a drought of 65 plate appearances without driving in a run to start the season. It was the longest such streak by any Yankee since 1967, when Mike Hegan didn’t get his first RBI until his 88th plate appearance of the year.

Breaking news: You cannot stop Chris Young, you can only hope to contain him. Young went 3-for-6 and scored two runs, raising his batting line to a ridiculous .368/.442/.816 in 13 games. He also became first Yankee outfielder with back-to-back three-hit games vs. the Tigers since Bernie Williams in 1995 (a fitting tribute on the same day that Bernie announced his retirement from baseball).

The Yankees did nearly all their damage against former Cy Young winner David Price, who got shelled by the Bronx Bombers for the second time in a row. Last August he gave up eight runs on 12 hits; Wednesday he was tagged for eight runs on 10 hits.

He’s in pretty good company, though, with those two awful performances: The last pitcher to allow at least eight runs and double-digit hits in consecutive outings against the Yankees was Hall of Famer Bob Feller in 1938-39.

Hits are overrated
The Yankees ended their 10-game road trip with another win in Detroit on Thursday, giving them a ton of momentum heading into the weekend matchup against the streaking Mets.

Masahiro Tanaka delivered another strong outing, pitching six-plus innings of one-run ball and giving up only three hits to the powerful Tigers lineup. Here is the list of Yankees in the last 100 years to throw back-to-back road games of more than six innings pitched, three or fewer hits allowed and at least six strikeouts within a single season: Masahiro Tanaka, Whitey Ford (1962). Yup, that’s it.

Andrew Miller pitched a perfect ninth inning with two strikeouts to get his sixth save in six chances. Since saves became an official stat in 1969, Miller is just the second player to begin his Yankee career by converting his first six save opportunities while giving up no more than one hit in those games. The other was the immortal Xavier Hernandez, who was part of the trio of closers the Yankees used in the 1994 strike-shortened season (along with Steve Howe and Bob Wickman).

How A-Rod became the Yankees’ best hitter

April 21, 2015 by Katie Sharp 203 Comments

Goodbye, baseball. (Photo credit: Kim Klement/Reuters)

There are few people who could have predicted Alex Rodriguez would be the leader or co-leader on the Yankees in batting average, on-base percentage, Wins Above Replacement, OPS, runs, RBI and homers – and arguably the team MVP – after the first two weeks of the season (yes, despite his 0-fer on Monday). Heck, six months ago it seemed like everyone was trying to figure out how the team could release him and recover part of the $61 million he’s still owed over the next three seasons.

Sure, it’s an incredibly small sample. The guy is also almost 40 years old while playing on two surgically-repaired hips, so he’s very likely not going to sustain this incredible pace.

But this scorching hot start is still very real, and nearly unprecedented even in the context of A-Rod’s career. The last time he had this many homers, RBI and hits in the team’s first 13 games was 2007, the same year he won the AL MVP award.

We know that only a few years ago he was an elite third baseman and his natural hitting skills are off the charts, but these eye-popping numbers are still somewhat shocking for a player that was out of the game for a year and was pretty mediocre the last time we saw him in a baseball uniform.

So what has been the key to A-Rod’s early-season performance? And how much of it can he sustain going forward?

Going, going, going…gone!
One of the reasons to be optimistic about his numbers is the fact that he’s absolutely crushing the ball. We’re talking mammoth, tape-measure homers and really solid bat-to-ball contact — power that few could have predicted at the start of spring training.

His average batted ball distance of 246 feet leads all major league players and his average batted ball velocity of 99.3 mph is the second-highest in MLB (min. 5 at-bats). He also ranks among the top 20 of all players in hard-hit rate – the percentage of at-bats ending in a hard-hit ball, based on video review – according to ESPN’s stat guru Mark Simon.

A-Rod owns the longest home run hit by anybody this season – a 477-foot shot on Friday night – and is the only player with three “no doubt” homers, according to hittrackeronline.com. (A no-doubt homer means the ball cleared the fence by at least 20 vertical feet and landed at least 50 feet past the fence.)

Can he handle the heat?
A key question heading into the season is whether A-Rod’s bat would be able to catch up to fastballs. Pitchers haven’t been shy about challenging A-Rod with the heater, and he’s done a good job so far answering his critics by going 6-for-15 with four homers and a double in at-bats ending in four-seamers.

Of the 11 four-seasm fastballs he’s put into play so far, only one has been a ground ball and four have been classified as line drives. Need more proof? No player has a higher slugging percentage or hit more homers against four-seam fastballs this season than Alex.

Patience is a virtue
Another encouraging sign is the strong place discipline numbers that Rodriguez is showing so far. His walk rate of 18 percent would be a career-high and swing rate at pitches out of the zone (26 percent) is better than the current league average. He clearly has done a good job of working counts and waiting for pitches in his sweetspot, while laying off pitches he can’t demolish.

If there’s one big weakness in his approach at the plate, though, it is his high whiff rate. His contact (63 percent) and strikeout percentages (31 percent) would both be career-worsts and are well-below-average. Pitchers have really exposed A-Rod’s propensity to swing and miss at off-speed and breaking pitches, especially down in the zone, as detailed in the heat map below:

While this lack of contact and tendency to chase soft stuff could be a concern going forward, it’s impact is probably lessened by his patience and good batting eye. As long as he can continue to get ahead in the count, take his walks and force pitchers to throw him hittable pitches, A-Rod should be able to keep up a high on-base percentage and give the Yankees a solid power bat on a consistent basis.

We know that A-Rod is probably not going to hit 40 homers and likely won’t finish with a near-.500 OBP at the end of the season. He is going to regress, but based on what he’s shown in these first few weeks, there is a good chance that he’ll be at least capable of providing above-average production for a team that could really use his power and patience in the lineup.

Yankeemetrics: April 17-19 (Rays)

April 20, 2015 by Katie Sharp 111 Comments

Welcome back, Alex. (Photo credit: Chris O'Meara/Associated Press) — Welcome back, Alex. (Photo credit: Chris O’Meara/Associated Press)

Back to the future, Part I
Alex Rodriguez delivered a vintage performance in the series opener against the Rays, leading the Yankees to a 5-4 win at Tropicana Field. A-Rod was almost literally the entire Yankees offense on Friday night. Seriously.

Rodriguez went 3-for-4 with four RBI and scored two runs; the rest of the lineup produced one run and went 2-for-26 in the game. Each of his three hits either gave the Yankees the lead or tied the game: his second-inning solo homer put the Yankees up 1-0, his sixth inning two-run blast tied the game at 4-4, and his eighth inning single drove in the game-winning run.

Let’s give A-Rod’s performance the proper Yankeemetric treatment, in bullet-point form:

• His first homer traveled 477 feet, according to hittrackeronline.com, the longest home run in the majors this season and the second-longest by any Yankee over the last 10 seasons. The only longer one was a 488-foot shot by Rodriguez on June 15, 2006 off Cliff Lee at the old Yankee Stadium.

• He is the second-oldest Yankee ever to have multi-homer game with four-or-more RBI, behind only a 43-year-old Enos Slaughter July 19, 1959 vs. the White Sox.

• He ended the night with four homers and 11 RBI after the first 10 games of the season. A-Rod is the first Yankee in franchise history to hit that many homers and have that many RBI in the team’s first 10 games at the age of 39 or older. The last 39-year-old (or older) on any team to reach those totals this early into the season was Eddie Murray for the Indians in 1995.

A-Rod’s eighth-inning heroics were set up by a lead-off single from Carlos Beltran. It was his 1,000th hit in the American League, making him the eighth player in major-league history with at least 1,000 hits in both leagues. The others are Frank Robinson, Dave Winfield, Vladimir Guerrero, Fred McGriff, Orlando Cabrera, Carlos Lee and Alfonso Soriano.

Back to the future, Part II
Masahiro Tanaka tossed his first (and hopefully not last) gem of the season on Saturday night as the Yankees clinched their first series win of the season with a 9-0 victory. It was the second-biggest shutout win for the Yankees at Tropicana Field, behind only a 10-0 blowout on April 10, 2010.

Tanaka dominated the Rays lineup, throwing seven scoreless innings with eight strikeouts, no walks and two hits allowed. The last Yankee right-hander with a performance like that – at least eight strikeouts, zero walks and no more than two hits given up – was Mike Mussina in his near-perfect game against the Red Sox on Sept. 2, 2001.

The game was a pitchers duel until the sixth inning when Brian McCann ripped a two-run triple to break a scoreless tie. It had been more than 15 years since a Yankee catcher hit a go-ahead triple that late in a game. Jorge Posada’s sixth-inning bases-loaded triple on April 13, 2000 was the game-winning hit against the Rangers.

Chris Young turned the game into a rout with a grand slam in the seventh inning. He is the first Yankee right-fielder with a grand slam against the Rays since Paul O’Neil on August 16, 2001. Before Young, no Yankee right-fielder had ever hit a grand slam at Tropicana Field.

How sweep it is
The Yankees finished off their first sweep of the season with a 5-3 win on Sunday. Last year the team didn’t record its first series sweep of three games or more until June 10-12 at Seattle.

Yes, the Yankees have certainly lived up to their Bronx Bombers nickname this season (17 homers in 12 games) but don’t underestimate their ability to play smallball, too. They scored two of their five runs via sacrifice flies on Sunday, bring their total to an MLB-best 10 sac flies on the season. It is just the second time since they became an official stat in 1954 that the Yankees have hit double-digits sac flies in the team’s first 12 games (had 12 in 1997).

Andrew Miller struck out three batters after giving up a leadoff double for his fourth save of the season. It was his third consecutive outing with a save and at least three strikeouts, the first Yankee reliever ever to have a streak of games like that (Mariano Rivera never did it more than two appearances in a row, believe it or not).

Yankeemetrics: April 13-15 (Orioles)

April 16, 2015 by Katie Sharp 92 Comments

Stephen Drew, grand slam. Not a joke. (Photo credit: NY Daily News)

Going streaking
The Yankees started their 10-game road trip with a 6-5 win over Orioles at Camden Yards, fueled by a three-homer outburst that gave them an AL-best 12 longballs through the first seven games. It’s just the seventh time in franchise history they’ve hit at least a dozen homers this early into the season, and the first time since 2011.

Stephen Drew was the unlikely hero for the Yankees, delivering the big blow with a pinch-hit grand slam in the seventh inning to turn a 4-2 deficit into a 6-4 lead. How rare was Drew’s homer? The only other Yankee in the past 75 years with a two-out, go-ahead pinch-hit grand slam was Johnny Blanchard on July 21, 1961 vs. the Red Sox. Prior to Drew, the last Yankee with a pinch-hit slam in the month of April was Bobby Murcer on April 9, 1981 against the Rangers.

Michael Pineda got the win despite a shaky outing in which he was pulled in the seventh inning after giving up five runs on nine hits. It was the first time as a Yankee he had allowed more than two runs in a start on the road. Pineda’s streak of seven consecutive road starts giving up two-or-fewer runs was the longest to begin a Yankee career over the last 100 seasons.

Sabathia’s least favorite road trip
So much for winning streaks. The Yankees lost the middle game of their three-game set vs. the Orioles, 4-3, as CC Sabathia was knocked around for four runs on seven hits in seven innings. This is the first time in his 15-year career that he’s started a season with two losses in his first two outings.

Sabathia, who once dominated the O’s in Baltimore (10-1, 2.73 ERA in first 12 starts at Camden Yards), fell to 0-5 in his last seven road starts against the Orioles. The only Yankee pitcher with a longer road losing streak against the Orioles in Baltimore is Stan Bahnsen, who lost six straight decisions from 1968-71.

Mark Teixeira tried to rally the Yankees with an RBI double in the sixth inning. Prior to that hit, Teixeira was hitless in 14 at-bats against Orioles starter Miguel Gonzalez. That was his second-worst 0-fer vs. any pitcher in his career, behind only an 0-for-16 mark against Freddy Garcia. #WeirdBaseball.

Alex Rodriguez had a chance to tie the game when he pinch hit for Drew with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and the Yankees down 4-3, but grounded out for the final out. That dropped A-Rod’s career line as a pinch hitter to 1-for-19, including the postseason. The lone hit was a 10th-inning single in a win over the Rays on August 25, 2013.

It’s just one game, right…
The Yankees relief corps entered the rubber game against the Orioles as one of the best bullpens in the AL, ranking second in ERA and third in batting average allowed. But they imploded on Wednesday night and blew a 3-2 lead in spectacular fashion, giving up nearly as many earned runs (5) in the sixth inning alone as they had in the first eight games combined (7). That paved the way for an eventual 7-5 loss, dropping the Yankees to 3-6 on the season, their worst nine-game start since 1991.

A-Rod provided one of the offensive highlights for the Yankees, hitting a deep bomb to left field for his 656th career home run (four away from Willie and potential $6 million bonus!) and 32nd at Camden Yards. That’s 10 more homers at the ballpark in Baltimore than any other visiting player.

The Yankees tagged Orioles pitcher Bud Norris for three runs in five innings but he ended up with a no-decision when the Orioles rallied to take the lead in the sixth inning. Norris remained perfect (4-0) in five career games against the Yankees, becoming just one of five Orioles pitchers (since the team moved to Baltimore in 1954) to go unbeaten in his first five major-league starts against New York. The others are Hoyt Wilhelm, Tom Phoebus, Rudy May, and Bob Milacki.