The New York Yankees, after two high scoring laughable wins on Friday, over the Baltimore Orioles, the Yankees pulled out a 2-1 squeaker in yesterday’s matinee game, in the tenth inning. In the two doubleheader games on Friday, the Yankees scored 16 runs to the Orioles 1 run. Yesterday’s matchup turned out to be a pitchers duel with both the Yankees Jordan Montgomery and the Oriole’s Dean Kremer pitching game gems.
During the long stretch of Yankee’s losses, when they lost 15 out of 20 games, one thing was prevalent. If the Yankees pitched well, the bats would remain silent, if the bats were alive, the pitching failed. That didn’t happen yesterday. Yes, the Yankees bats were considerably silent for a change, but the Yankee pitching of Jordan Montgomery and the bullpen held the Orioles to just one run, four hits, and just one walk.
Jordan Montgomery, entering yesterday’s game was 2-2 after having two poor outings, one where he only was allowed to pitch two-thirds of an inning, giving up four runs. Yesterday, a more confident Montgomery took to the mound and immediately showed he had his stuff. He kept the O’s scoreless for 5.2 innings while striking out a career-high 9 batters.
The Yankee offense which wasn’t much, started in the first inning when leadoff hitter DJ LeMahieu hit a stand up triple to left-center. Clint Frazier his a long sac fly to right allowing LeMahieu to score for the Yankees one-run lead. That would be the Yankees only scoring until the tenth inning. In the sixth inning with an Oriole on third, Thairo Estrada failed to make a catch of a pop up just behind his head, allowing the O’s to score their only run in the game, an unearned run for Montgomery. Immediately following, Aaron Boone came to the mound to relieve an obviously disturbed “Monty,” not wanting to leave the game.
Meanwhile, the O’s Deam Kremer, who had beaten the Yankees a week earlier, in his major league debut, pitched five stellar innings giving up just the one run and four Yankee hits while striking out seven Yankees.
With the long outings of both Gerrit Cole and Masahiro Tanaka on Friday, the bullpen was entirely fresh for manager Boone. He replaced Montgomery with Chad Green who pitched 1.1 hitless innings. Zack Britton allowed just one hit in the eighth, and Aroldis Chapman pitched a clean ninth while striking out two O’s, and the game went into extra innings.
At the top of the tenth, with a man on second, Jonathan Holder took to the mound pitching a perfect tenth. At the bottom of the frame, the half started with DJ LeMahieu on second base. A wild pitch by the O’s Hunter Harvey allowed DJ to get to third base. Luke Voit stepped to the plate and hit a sack fly to right, and LeMahieu crossed home plate for the walk-off win. It was the New York Yankees fourth win in a row, one from the Blue Jays and the last three from the O’s. The win put the O’s four and a half games behind the improving Yankees. DJ LeMahieu scored both runs for the Yankees. The winning pitcher was Jonathan Holder and the loser, Hunter Harvey.
Yesterday’s win was really important for the New York Yankees, allowing them to stay in third place in the East and separate themselves from the Orioles, in the postseason race. The Toronto Blue Jays won their game against the Mets, keeping the Yankees just one back in the loss column. The Yankees will try to right that today in another matinee game in the Bronx, as they attempt to sweep the four-game series with the Orioles. Today J.A. Happ will take the mound for the Yankees and John Means for Baltimore.