A Humiliating Day For The Yankees in Every Way Imaginable

Another bitter tasting dose of reality was served up Thursday by the Orioles as they humiliated the Yankees to win the series and improve to 5-2 this year against Aaron Boone’s team. The Yankees looked completely outclassed in this awful game and despite their 51-26 record, it is plainly clear that the Orioles are the better team. Down in Box Score Briefs, just one game to talk about - the one played at historic Rickwood Field in Alabama which served to memorialize the passing of Willie Mays.

June 20: Orioles 17, Yankees 5

It’s not too often in baseball where the very first pitch of the game told you exactly what kind of day it was about to be, but that certainly happened on a miserable Thursday in the Bronx. Luis Gil threw a meatball down the middle, Gunnar Henderson mashed a line drive to right field, Juan Soto looked like a Little Leaguer in misreading it as it went over his head, and the rout was on.

What a disgraceful performance in every way for the Yankees, and it just cemented my year-long stance that the Orioles are the best team in the American League, and quite possibly all of MLB.

You probably think I’m nuts saying that all the time since the Yankees remain a half-game ahead in the AL East, but after watching the first two series between these teams, there is no doubt to me which is the better team and you can’t possibly offer an argument to the contrary.

The Orioles do everything well, and they do it with young, exciting, athletic players, all of whom hit the living shit out of the ball, field their positions well, and create trouble on the bases. Their pitching staff has been decimated by injuries, but with an offense like this, I’m not sure that even matters.

Right now, the only area the Yankees might have an edge is in the starting rotation given that Baltimore has lost three-fifths of its preferred rotation for the season, but they have a better bullpen, one that has a 3.20 ERA which is third-best in MLB while the Yankees band of bullpen bums has fallen to 1oth at 3.52.

“The first couple series, they’ve had their way with us,” Aaron Boone said. “They’ve had the upper hand. But there is a long way to go in all this. You never like losing, especially in your division and up against a team you’re battling neck and neck with. It’s also an opportunity to hopefully grow for us. They’re really good. They’re a complete club. They’re about as formidable as there is.”

The Orioles have now gone 22 series against AL East teams without losing one - they’ve won 16 and split six - which is the longest unbeaten series streak since division play began in 1969. That’s right, they have not lost a series against their main competition in the East since April 2023 including five straight against the Yankees.

The Yankees - who now have a lame record of 10-12 against the AL East - had a chance to snap that streak when they won the opener Tuesday, but dropped the last two. And against the five best teams they’ve played so far this season - the Orioles, and the division-leading Guardians, Mariners, Dodgers and Brewers, they are 9-11. This cuts to the heart of my pessimism, the fact that when they’ve played good teams, most likely playoff teams, they’ve been mediocre at best.

“It’s gonna be back and forth (with the Orioles) all the way to September, that’s for sure,” said the ever optimistic Aaron Judge. “I think we’re looking forward to having those battles back and forth. But what it really ultimately comes down to is us just taking care of ourselves. We go out there and play baseball the way we’re supposed to, clean it up on defense a little bit … we’ll take care of it and be where we want to be.”

Sorry, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

Here are my observations:

➤ Given how great Gil has pitched this season, this performance was simply unbelievable. Stunning in every way. He started the day leading MLB in fewest hits allowed per nine innings at 4.4, then gave up eight while recording only four outs. He had allowed just 18 earned runs in his first 14 starts, but gave up seven in his 1.2 innings. It was baffling, but it also just illuminated my point about how good this Orioles team is.

➤ When the Yankees won their only game in the first series at Camden Yards on May 1, it was Gil throwing 6.1 scoreless innings to key the victory. But in this one, they had a clear plan of attack: Swing early and often and it worked as they jumped all over him and he has no answers. “You don’t expect that, but that’s part of it,” Boone said. “It’s baseball, it happens. Not his day. They came out really aggressive to the fastball in that first inning and took it away, got him out of the zone a little bit and then he made some mistakes in the heart of the plate with everything. He was in the heart of the plate a lot.”

➤ The Yankees had been an AL-best 12-2 in Gil’s starts this year and had won nine in a row. Also, this was the first time this season the starter didn’t go at least four innings, snapping a franchise-record 76-game streak.

➤ The Orioles scored in eight of the nine innings, their 17 runs were their most against the Yankees since 2005 and their most at Yankee Stadium since 1986. That’s because not only did they obliterate Gil, they overmatched every stiff reliever the Yankees threw out there. Shit, one of the best innings came from catcher Jose Trevino giving up just one run in the ninth throwing even slower than he does when he tries to throw out base runners.

➤ After his game-starting double Henderson scored but Gil escaped further trouble in the first. Still, it was obvious he wasn’t right, and wow, did that ever manifest itself in the second. Cedric Mullins, who is having an awful year at the plate, hit a two-run homer. Then Gil loaded the bases and Ryan Mountcastle cleared them with a three-run double that made it 6-0. Then he loaded them again before hitting Jordan Westburg with a pitch to force in the extra point for a 7-0 lead. Finally, Boone came to get him.

➤ That meant this terrible bullpen needed to cover the final 7.1 innings and one might say, they didn’t cover them very well. Counting Trevino’s one run allowed, the relief corps gave up 10 runs on 11 hits, five walks, and was also hurt by some awful fielding as the Yankees made three errors, Oswaldo Cabrera making one at third base and one at second base which was quite a thing. He was moved to second because Gleyber Torres had to be removed due to soreness in his groin, so yet another injury to wonder about.

➤ The new reliever who was signed Thursday, lefty Tim Hill, had barely found his locker before he was thrown to the wolves in the fifth and that was quite an inning. Henderson, using perfect bat control, slapped a double down the third-base line because the infield was shifted to the right and no one was at third base. He stole third because, as we know, Trevino may never throw out another runner. Henderson then made a mistake, one the Yankees know all too well. With the infield in, he was going on contact - so stupid, I can’t believe MLB players do this with the infield - and with the ball going right to Torres, Henderson was dead meat at home. However, Cabrera then made his first error and Anthony Santander made the Yankees pay when he ripped a three-run homer off Hill, all three runs unearned.

➤ Hey, glad I was wrong about Judge, but in my defense, I did admit I’m not a doctor. He was in the lineup and his hand looked fine as he hit a two-run homer that got the Yankees within 8-3 in the third and also had an RBI single.

➤ Soto has been a bit of a dud lately. Yes, he’s drawing walks, but he has not been impactful hitting the ball. In his last six games he’s 3-for-19 and the fielding issues we were told about were on display in this series, though to be fair, the Yankees defense as a whole was lousy in these three games.

➤ As if this day didn’t suck enough, the Yankees announced that Jasson Dominguez is going to miss at least eight weeks with his oblique strained suffered last week in Rochester, so once again his development has been derailed. This is worrisome because we’re getting to the point, even at the young age of 21, where it looks like Dominguez might start getting tagged as injury-prone, something Judge dealt with in his first few seasons with the Yankees.

As if this series wasn’t difficult enough, it does not get any easier this weekend with the resurgent Braves coming to town. We say it so often, it’s not who you play but when you play them and if Atlanta had come into town last week, it was 35-30 and on a five-game losing streak and their best players either injured or mysteriously playing well below expectation.

Now? They’ve won six of their last seven as DH Marcell Ozuna continues on an MPV pace with 20 homers, 63 RBI and a .989 OPS while guys like third baseman Austin Riley, second baseman Ozzie Albies and first baseman Matt Olson are heating up just in time for their visit to New York. Great.

Atlanta is a damn good team, I’d say much better than its record of 41-31 indicates. If the Yankees play the way they did the last two days, it’s going to be a rough weekend given that the Braves have two of their top three starters pitching.

Here are the pitching matchups: Friday at 7:05 on Apple-TV its Carlos Rodon (3.28 ERA) against Chris Sale (2.98); Saturday at 7:15 on FOX it’s Marcus Stroman (3.08) against Charlie Morton (3.91); and Sunday at 1:35 on YES it’s Nestor Cortes (3.36) against Max Fried (3.11).

⚾ MLB did everything right with its showcase game Thursday night at 114-year-old Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. In honoring the Negro leagues by playing in the oldest professional ballpark in the country, the league did a fabulous job memorializing the great Willie Mays who passed away Tuesday at the age of 93.

The Cardinals beat Mays’ old team, the Giants, 6-5, but that was secondary to everything the game stood for. This was the place where Mays played his first game as a professional for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948 when he was 17 years old.

The Giants arrived for the game wearing the No. 8 jersey Mays wore when he played for the Black Barons, and they all visited his Hall of Fame plague which the museum in Cooperstown shipped down to Alabama for the occasion. Painted behind home plate was the number 24 which Mays wore throughout his 23-year MLB career, 21 of those with the Giants.

Originally, this game was meant to be a celebration of Mays’ career as he was, by any measure, baseball’s greatest living ballplayer. It’s funny, when he was alive, Joe DiMaggio insisted that he held that title and demanded that whenever he made an appearance, he be announced as such. Look, Joe D was great and we as Yankees fans love him and his legacy, but he was never better than Mays and anyone who isn’t a diehard Yankee fan would agree.

Sadly, it became obvious in the last few weeks that Mays would not be able to make the trip to Alabama, but everyone was hoping he would at least hold on until Thursday, but he couldn’t do it.

“For us, it’s about Willie and where Willie started,” said Giants manager Bob Melvin. “We’re the perfect team to be here and play.”

The teams wore Negro league uniforms honoring teams from their respective cities, and FOX did a cool thing for a half inning by broadcasting the game in black and white with old-time statistical graphics. That was very cool.

Oh, and former Yankee Reggie Jackson certainly brought the heat during his appearance on the broadcast, reminding everyone about the racism he, and of course the Negro leagues players before him, faced.

“Coming back here is not easy,” Jackson said. “The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled. Fortunately, I had a manager (John McNamara) and I had players on the team that helped me get through it. But I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. If I couldn’t eat in the place, nobody would eat. We would get food to travel. If I couldn’t stay in a hotel, they’d drive to the next hotel and find a place where I could stay. Had it not been for Rollie Fingers, Johnny McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudi ... I slept on their couch three, four nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally, they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out.”