Luis Gil, Clay Holmes Pitch Brilliantly as Yankees Blank Orioles

Luis Gil pitched the best game of his brief career, Oswaldo Cabrera provided the only offense with a two-run homer, and the bullpen finished off a 2-0 shutout in what was was one of the best Yankees victories of the year given the competition. And down in Box Score Briefs, some thoughts on the smoking hot Twins, Mike Trout’s latest injury, and the terrific early-season performances of Ranger Suarez of the Phillies, Marcell Ozuna of the Braves, and old friend Luis Severino of the Mets. Lets get to it.

May 1: Yankees 2, Orioles 0

I don’t even know why I try to figure out baseball because it’s one of the most unsolvable mysteries in the universe.

If there was one game in this series against the Orioles that you would have bet the farm on the Yankees losing, it was Wednesday night with Luis Gil, who has been nothing but inconsistent during his brief and Tommy John-shortened career, opposing Baltimore’s Corbin Burnes, flat out one of the best pitchers in all of baseball.

So naturally, the Yankees won 2-0, because of course they did.

Now granted, they did virtually nothing on offense for the third game in a row, but they happened to get one rather stunning swing from Oswaldo Cabrera off Burnes in the fifth inning and his line drive down the right-field line just stayed fair and just cleared the wall for a two-run homer. But as it turned out, that was all they needed because Gil was fantastic.

“Anytime he goes out there, he’s usually got some overwhelming stuff and the ability to do what he did tonight,” Aaron Boone said. “Man, what a great tone he set for us. I mean, he’s got some poison coming out there at you.”

Gil pitched into the seventh inning for the first time in his career and by the time Boone took him out, he had thrown 6.1 scoreless innings allowing just two hits and a walk while striking out five. What a performance against a stellar Orioles lineup that couldn’t square him up all night. And now after two desultory losses, the Yankees have a chance to earn a split Thursday afternoon.

Here are my observations:

➤ Gil was at 88 pitches through six innings and I have to give credit to Boone for letting him start the seventh because with this haphazard Yankees bullpen, that was the right call. Even when Gil walked Ryan O’Hearn to start the inning, Boone let him face slumping righty-swinger Ryan Mountcastle and he got him out. That’s when Boone brought in Caleb Ferguson and the struggling lefty did a great job striking out Colton Cowser and Jordan Westburg.

➤ Ian Hamilton was next, and he continues to be a problem. He has pitched like shit for three weeks and that continued. He walked Cedric Mullins and hit Heston Kjerstad on a 1-2 pitch to start the eighth and right away the game got sweaty. He popped up Anthony Santander, but Boone wasn’t screwing around with Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman due up. He called on Clay Holmes for a five-out save, something he hadn’t done since June 20, 2023 against the Mariners, which was his only five-out save last year.

➤ Holmes can drive us nuts, but to be fair, he has been lights out in his last five outings. I joked earlier that he has the worst 0.00 ERA in baseball history, but that’s no longer the case. He struck out the Orioles’ two best hitters to kill that threat in the eighth, and after giving up an infield single by O’Hearn to start the ninth, he mowed through Mountcastle, Cowser and Westburg to end the game. In his last five outings covering five innings, he has given up two hits, no walks, and has struck out 10. This was already his 10th save of the year. “Clay Holmes, that’s about as nasty as it gets,” said Orioles manager Brandon Hyde. “You’re throwing 97 mph bowling balls with a slider; it’s going to be tough to score against.”

➤ The offense was pathetic again, but hey, for the first time in 10 games where they scored two runs or fewer, they finally won. The Yankees managed just four hits and went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position. For those of you scoring at home, that’s four runs, 15 hits and 0-for-12 with RISP in this series.

➤ Thankfully in the fifth, Jose Trevino reached on an infield single when Henderson fielded his grounder up the middle but slipped and couldn’t make the throw. And Cabrera followed with his home run. For what it’s worth, when Cabrera homers, the Yankees are 4-0 this season.

➤ Aaron Judge is now hitting .200 and he’s 1-for-11 in this series; Gleyber Torres is 2-for-11 and is down to .215; and Anthony Volpe is 1-for-12 in the series, 11-for-74 in his last 16 games, and is down to .262. Seriously, it’s amazing this team is 20-12, the first AL team to reach 20 wins this year.

⚾ The good news for the Twins is they won their 10th straight game Wednesday, beating the pathetic White Sox 10-5. It’s Minnesota’s longest winning streak since 2008 and just the eighth double-digit win streak in franchise history which quite frankly is kind of sad for a franchise that has appeared in three World Series and won two. It has been quite a turnaround for a team that began the season 7-13, yet if you can believe this, their 17-13 record is only good enough for fourth place in the surprisingly competitive AL Central.

Now the bad news for the Twins. Outfielder Byron Buxton, a player who is injured so often that it’s amazing he’s not a Yankee, is hurt again. He pulled up lame running to second base and hobbled off the field with a sore knee. Buxton hasn’t exactly been tearing it up this year as he’s hitting .250 with just one homer and 11 RBI and he has struck out 32 times compared to just three walks. Still, when he’s right he’s a great player and he was back playing center field for the first time since 2022 after the Twins limited him to DH in 2023 to protect the fragile speedster. It’s crazy how some guys are just injury cursed.

⚾ Speaking of which, Mike Trout. Man, what a bummer it was to hear that the superstar Angel has to undergo knee surgery which will knock him out for about three months, cutting short yet another season, one where he already had hit an MLB-high 10 homers. This will be the fourth time in the last five years that Trout will probably play less than half a season, and the only year that didn’t happen was the 2020 Covid season when he played 53 out of 60 and apparently didn’t have enough time to get hurt.

In his first eight-plus seasons Trout hit 285 home runs and his OPS was 1.000 as he won the 2012 rookie of the year, three MVP awards while also finishing runner-up four other times, and he took home seven Silver Slugger honors for best hitter at his position. If Trout had stayed even reasonably healthy in his career, he could have challenged some of the sport’s all-time records, but now, at age 32 with 378 home runs, it might be a struggle for him to get to 500, let alone Barry Bonds’ 762.

We lament all the injuries the Yankees annually have, but imagine being an Angels fan and year after year you see Trout go down. At least they used to have Shohei Ohtani to watch, but now they have, well, nobody.

⚾ The Phillies gave a shit ton of money to frontline starters Zach Wheeler and Aaron Nola, but the ace of MLB’s second-best rotation (based on an ERA of 2.50) is Ranger Suarez. The 28-year-old debuted in Philadelphia in 2018 but didn’t become a full-time member of the rotation until 2022 and in the last two seasons he was solid and reliable with a 3.88 ERA in 51 starts.

This year? He’s untouchable. He’s 5-0 in six starts with a 1.32 ERA, a 0.634 WHIP with 40 strikeouts and just five walks in 40.1 innings. He had three straight starts with no runs allowed before he gave up one on April 27 in San Diego during his fifth victory.

⚾ What a season this has been for the Braves’ Marcell Ozuna. He ranks second in MLB in home runs (9), leads with 32 RBI, and his 1.027 OPS trails only Mookie Betts of the Dodgers. Ozuna came to Atlanta in 2020 and was a Covid short season star as he led the NL in homers (18), RBI (56) and total bases (145), but then he became a societal menace.

In 2021 he was arrested on charges of aggravated assault by strangulation and battery after police officers said they witnessed him attacking his wife, though the charges were later dropped. In 2022 he was nailed for DUI. So, not a model citizen, not a guy anyone wants to root for. On the field he missed large swaths of both years and when he played, he was terrible as he hit a combined .222. However, he rebounded with a big 2023 when he hit 40 homers and had 100 RBI, and now he’s simply been one of the best hitters in the game.

⚾ Luis Severino, who desperately needed a change of scenery, didn’t go too far to get it as he merely changed New York City boroughs when he joined the Mets on a one-year prove it deal. And he’s proving that he can still be a pretty damn good pitcher when he’s healthy as he has a 2.31 ERA and 1.057 WHIP through six starts.

Severino’s time with the Yankees will forever be remembered for the flashes of brilliance he displayed, especially 2017 and 2018, but also the ill-fated four-year contract extension he received during which he spent most of those years on the injured list.

But the Mets are getting vintage Sevy and Monday night he took a no-hitter into the eighth inning against the Cubs. Unfortunately for him he gave up a single to Dansby Swanson to end his bid, and then manager Carlos Mendoza - the ex-Yankee bench coach - stuck with him and he allowed Swanson to score so he wound up with a no-decision. The Mets star closer, Edwin Diaz, then gave up a stunning two-run homer in the ninth to Christopher Morel and the Cubs won 3-1.