Orioles Are Proving They Are Better Than The Yankees

Another lousy night of offense as the Yankees managed just five hits and they dropped a 4-2 decision to an Orioles team that is just plain and simple, better. And today in Pinstripe Past, we celebrate the birthday of Red Ruffing who was born 119 years ago this week and after some early struggles with the Red Sox, went to the Yankees and became one of the franchise’s all-time greatest pitchers and a Hall of Famer. Lets get to it.

April 30: Orioles 4, Yankees 2

Well, I guess the Yankees will always have Milwaukee, right?

I think we all recognized that what happened against the Brewers in those back-to-back 15-run explosions was an outrageous aberration. OK, I won’t put words in any of your mouths - I knew it was an outrageous aberration. And I was right.

In the first two games against Baltimore they have crashed back to earth and have scored two runs on a grand total of 12 hits, they’ve gone 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position and left 14 men on base. There are just way too many easy outs in this lineup and yes, that includes the patron saint of the Bronx, Aaron Judge, who is hitting .211 and has been pretty awful all year.

The Yankees are now 19-12, and they have fallen a game behind the Orioles who, it is quite possible, moved into first place and won’t look back. After their blazing hot 12-3 start, the Yankees closed April on a 7-9 downer and it’s because their offense just disappears in too many games.

They have played nine games where they scored two or fewer runs and they’ve lost every one of them. Meanwhile, when they can get to three runs they are 19-3. What that says is the pitching - despite a shaky bullpen - has held up its end of the bargain but it has repeatedly been let down by the lack of scoring.

“It’s baseball,” Juan Soto said. “At the end of the day, we’re all grinding, we’re all trying to get some runs on the board. But things aren’t going our way. They’re making great plays, they’re diving all over the place. We gave good at-bats, we’re hitting the ball hard and they just haven’t landed for us.”

Here are my observations:

➤ Nestor Cortes wasn’t great but he also got no help from his teammates on offense, or defense. He was burned by shoddy fielding in the second inning which gift-wrapped Baltimore’s first run, and in a three-run fourth he fell victim to some tough batted ball luck coupled with the fact that the Orioles have young, athletic, energetic and talented players who hustle on every play and make things happen. Pretty much the opposite of the Yankees.

➤ In the second, Anthony Santander lifted a fly ball down the right-field line and for some reason, Anthony Rizzo ran all the way out, called off Soto, and dropped the ball on what was a very hard play that he had no business trying to make. Santander wound up on second with a double. Soto was positioned over in the gap and he had a long run, but he was going to get there until he saw Rizzo way the hell out where he shouldn’t have been. “I think I had a better shot than (Rizzo),” Soto said. “I just didn’t call it because when I was about to call it, I think I was too far. He probably wouldn’t have heard me, and he seemed like he had a good route. I just let him do his thing.”

➤ The next batter, Jordan Westburg, hit a grounder to Gleyber Torres who, rather than take the out at first tried to nail Santander going to third. He had no lane to throw but did so anyway and the ball glanced off Santander and skipped into foul territory so Santander got up and ran home. Two dumb plays and it was 1-0.

➤ After an Austin Wells solo homer in the third, the Orioles put up three in the fourth and in the process showed why Yankees fans will be envious of their roster for years to come. Jorge Mateo and James McCann each doubled to left to make it 2-0, McCann’s ball sailing over Judge’s head as it looked like he misread the flight. Then Colton Cowser beat out an infield single as Anthony Volpe made a diving play up the middle but couldn’t throw him out. Gunnar Henderson followed with an RBI infield single to Torres who ranged into the hole but Henderson was simply too fast and Torres had no chance. Finally, Adley Rutschman dumped a single into right just in front of Soto to bump the lead to 4-1.

➤ “I thought the one real mistake he made was the changeup he pulled down and in to McCann for the double,” Aaron Boone said of Cortes. “Otherwise, their athleticism beat out a couple infield hits, the bloop. But I thought stuff-wise and attack-wise, he was really good. They put some tough at-bats on him, but I thought he was good.”

➤ Four runs was more than enough for Orioles starter Dean Kremer who gave up the Wells homer and then a long sixth-inning solo homer to Soto, but that was it. He held the Yankees to four hits and four walks in seven innings before two relievers closed it out. In the eighth, Volpe singled, but Judge, batting as the tying run, struck out. Oh, and earlier in the game, Judge grounded into his MLB-leading 10th double play of the season, and Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton did the same thing as the Yankees stretched their total to a league-worst 36 GIDPs.

➤ “We’ve got a lot of guys who hit the ball hard, and that happens,” Aaron Boone said of the DPs. “You go back in the history of time, unfortunately a lot of the best hitters, especially the best right-handed hitters, sometimes hit into the most double plays. We’re putting the ball in play well. We’re having the right at-bats. We just gotta break through. Especially when you’re playing a good team, you gotta take advantage of some opportunities.”

Red Ruffing’s life changed when the Red Sox dealt him to the Yankees

Red Ruffing was 37 years old, he was missing four toes on his left foot due to a childhood mining accident, and he was married and had a son, but once America entered World War II, everyone had a role to play in the effort to preserve democracy.

With that mangled foot, Ruffing was never going to be sent overseas and when he failed his original physical he thought he was going to be passed over completely, but the Army decided he was perfectly fit for non-combat duty. So, like many of the ballplayers who either volunteered or were called to service, he remained stateside working in a defense plant in California, leading soldiers in physical fitness training, and pitching for various military teams.

“The last doctor I saw was an Army doctor,” said Ruffing. “He put on his report that what I could do on the outside I could do on the inside. He would have drafted any ballplayer. So that’s how I got in.”

Ruffing once shared a story about his first day of basic training. “A sergeant said to me, ‘Ruffing, I understand you can pitch.’ I answered, ‘That’s right.’ And the sergeant said, ‘Okay, let’s see how fast you can pitch this tent.’” If he pitched that tent as well as he pitched a baseball, that sergeant had to be quite impressed.

Ruffing’s career did not start well as he was stuck playing for awful Red Sox teams in his first six-plus seasons, the last five of which finished dead last in the American League. But a life-changing event occurred on May 6, 1930.

Boston owner Bob Quinn, who was in financial peril, traded him to the Yankees in exchange for bit player Cedric Durst and $50,000 in cash. Sound familiar? It should because a decade earlier, another financially-strapped Red Sox owner, Harry Frazee, sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in what remains the most dubious transaction in baseball history.

At the time of the trade, Ruffing’s record with the woeful Red Sox was 39-96 with a 4.61 ERA and he was coming off back-to-back seasons where he led the AL in losses with 25 in 1928 and 22 in 1929. But once he joined the Yankees and was being supported by the likes of Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Bill Dickey and Earle Combs, yeah, his fortunes completely changed. He finished that 1930 season winning 15 of his 20 decisions and it only got better as the years went on.

“The Red Sox of my time weren’t even a good Double-A team,” Ruffing said. “That year I lost 25 for the Sox, I would have won 25 with the Yankees behind me.”

From 1936-39, Ruffing became the only pitcher in Yankees history to win at least 20 games in four straight years, and he also won four of his six World Series starts as the Yankees won all four of those Fall Classics. The Yankees played in seven World Series during Ruffing’s 15 years with them and manager Joe McCarthy picked him to start Game 1 in six of those because, as McCarthy said, “He’s the best pitcher around.”

And for McCarthy, that was saying something because he wasn’t exactly the type of man who threw around plaudits, though Ruffing once acknowledged that the two men were not close. “Well, he said hello to me on the first day of spring camp and said goodbye to me on the last day of the season,” Ruffing said. “In between he just put the ball in my hand and that was all I wanted.”

He once explained his success this way. “There are two important things to remember; keep in shape and know where each pitch is going. It pays off. I knew where my pitches were going because I worked on control continuously. I never had a curveball. If I threw a curve at a batter he’d laugh. But by being able to pitch the ball hard and where I wanted, I became successful. Ask Hank Greenberg. I struck him out a few times.”

For as great as he was on the mound - among all-time Yankees starting pitchers Ruffing ranks third in games pitched (426), and second in innings (3,168.2), wins (231) and shutouts (40) - Ruffing was also one of the finest hitting pitchers in baseball history.

He still holds the MLB record for pitchers with eight seasons batting at least .300, six of those as a Yankee. His 273 RBI are the most for a pitcher, as are his 98 doubles, and the only pitchers with more home runs than his 36 are Wes Farrell (38) and Bob Lemon (37).

Yankees managers called on Ruffing as a pinch-hitter 206 times and he had a .249 average in those at bats, one of his pinch hits coming on Aug. 14, 1933 when he hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth to beat Boston 6-2, the first grand slam ever by a Yankee pitcher.

“When I started out, I was like most pitchers at the plate, scared,” he said. “I’d jump back from a tight pitch and hit with a foot in the bucket. Then one day it happened. I got hit by a pitched ball and I was amazed, it didn’t hurt me at all. From that day on I dug in at the plate and became a hitter.”

When he was discharged from the Army in 1945 at the age of 40, he wasn’t sure where his baseball career stood. “The first thing I hope to do is to have a vacation with my wife and child in the mountains of upstate New York,” he said. And that’s what he did, but soon he was back with the Yankees.

Ruffing had not been on a major league mound since Game 5 of the 1942 World Series when his complete game wasn’t enough to prevent the Cardinals from clinching the championship that day. Still, on July 26, 1945 he pitched six strong innings and was the winner as the Yankees blew out the A’s 13-4. He also hit a triple.

His catcher was rookie Aaron Robinson, and they became the first battery in MLB history made up of players whose careers were interrupted by World War II - Robinson had served in the Navy.

Ruffing’s Yankees career ended halfway through 1946 when he suffered a knee injury and was later released, and while he signed with the White Sox in 1947 he pitched in only nine games and called it a career.

Despite all his success, the Hall of Fame voters seemed to penalize him for his days with Boston because it wasn’t until 1967, Ruffing’s 15th and final year on the ballot, that he finally made it into the Cooperstown shrine.

Dickey, who was inducted in 1954, certainly wondered what took so long. He caught Ruffing for 15 seasons and he said of the big righty, “If I were asked to choose the best pitcher I’ve ever caught, I would have to say Ruffing.”

Keeping it all in perspective, Ruffing said, “Baseball is a great game, it’s been marvelous to me and I never will be able to repay the debt. It took me out of the coal mines. Baseball put me on the lift, out of the shafts and into the sunshine, into a grand game among grand guys. Into a way of life that’s remarkable. That’s the good old USA for you.”

⚾ April 29, 1939: On a cold Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, Lou Gehrig drew a walk in the second inning of a 3-1 loss to the Senators, and then singled off Washington’s Ken Chase in the fourth. That proved to be the last of his 2,721 hits, a franchise record that stood until 2009 when Derek Jeter broke it.

The next day, Gehrig went 0-for-4, his batting average through eight games was .143, and this would be the last time the great first baseman would play. On May 2 in Detroit, manager Joe McCarthy - on Gehrig’s insistence - did not write his name on the lineup card, ending his consecutive games played streak at 2,130. Two months later came the news that he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the disease which would kill him in 1941, and is now commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig disease.

⚾ April 30, 2010: Mariano Rivera, still going strong at 40 years of age, pitched a perfect ninth inning to close out the Yankees 6-4 victory over the White Sox. Ho hum for Rivera, MLB’s all-time saves leader, but there was more to it. This was his 51st consecutive converted save opportunity, a new MLB record. And with two strikeouts, he moved past Roger Clemens and into the top 10 on the franchise’s all-time strikeout list with 1,015. Derek Jeter provided the bulk of the offense with three hits including a tying two-run homer in the fifth and a game-winning two-run tripe in the seventh.

⚾ May 3, 1936: Celebrated rookie Joe DiMaggio missed the first few weeks of the season because he had burned his foot in a diathermy machine during spring training, but this was the day he made his Yankees debut and it was worth the wait. DiMaggio rapped out three hits including a triple and scored three runs as the Yankees blew out the St. Louis Browns 14-5.

Batting third, DiMaggio reached on a fielders’ choice in his first MLB at bat and later scored during a four-run first inning. His first hit came on a single in the second and he scored on a sacrifice fly by Bill Dickey. He then hit an RBI triple in the sixth and scored on a single by Gehrig, and he also singled in the eighth. Yeah, that was certainly a sign of things to come.