Yankees Battle Back to Earn Series Split With Mariners

The starting pitching was again phenomenal as Luis Gil dominated the Mariners and the Yankees were able to secure a split of the four-game series after dropping the first two games. Down in Box Score Briefs, the Pirates wasted another fine Paul Skenes outing, the Phillies are smoking hot, the Orioles got back on the winning track, and the A’s and Rockies played a crazy game in Oakland. Let’s get to it.

May 23: Yankees 5, Mariners 0

We are witnessing some pretty remarkable things from the Yankees starting rotation through what is almost the first one-third of the 2024 season.

Gerrit Cole, the reigning AL Cy Young award winner, has not thrown a pitch this year yet somehow, the Yankees have the lowest team ERA in MLB at 2.86, and their starters-only ERA is actually a touch better at 2.85, but that’s third-best behind the Phillies and Red Sox.

Thursday afternoon, Luis Gil was once again nearly unhittable as he pitched 6.1 innings of shutout ball, allowing just an infield single and two walks with eight strikeouts as the Yankees earned a split of their four-game series with the Mariners.

This was the 11th straight Yankees start of at least five innings and two runs or fewer allowed which is a new team record. And for Gil, it was his fifth straight start of at least six innings and one or fewer runs, tying him with CC Sabathia (2011) for the second-longest such stretch by a Yankee.

In his next start which will come in Anaheim early next week in the middle of the Yankees’ upcoming nine-game West Coast trip, Gil will try to tie Steve Kline who had six in a row in 1972. Think of all the great Yankees pitchers who never did something like this. Pretty amazing.

“Credit to their starter,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “He’s been really good, and we knew coming into the game it was gonna be a tough battle, hoping to get more pitches on him. But he was efficient early in the game and that was kind of the story. There’s a reason he’s on a good run right now. That’s pretty electric stuff and we didn’t get anything going offensively against him.”

Gil has made 10 starts this year. He’s 6-1, with a 2.11 ERA in 55.1 innings, 70 strikeouts, 29 walks, an opponent batting average against of .143 and an OPS against of .492. Last year, here’s what Cole’s first 10 starts looked like on his way to the Cy Young: 5-0 with a 2.01 ERA in 62.2 innings, strikeouts, 20 walks, a .209 average against and a .585 OPS against. The Yankees were 8-2 for both Gil and Cole. Yes, essentially, Gil has been Cole.

“He’s got amazing talent, great ceiling, and he’s delivering,” said Aaron Boone of the pitcher who now has the lowest hits per nine innings average in MLB at 4.39. “He’s been one of the best pitchers in the league, and just continues to get better and better.”

Here are my observations:

➤ You knew Gil had it when he set the Mariners down on nine pitches in the first inning, had two strikeouts in the second, and then finished his first time through the order perfect in the third. J.P. Crawford led off the fourth with a single to short, a play I thought Anthony Volpe probably could have been given an error on, but it was ruled a single. That was the only hit Seattle would get. Gil retired the next six men before his first spot of trouble in the sixth when he walked two.

➤ Here, Boone made me raise my eyebrows. The Mariners had made Gil work hard after the first inning because it felt like they fouled off about 500 pitches and he was starting to labor as his pitch count went over 90. Lefty swinger Luke Raley came up with two outs and lefty Victor Gonzalez was warmed and ready in the bullpen. Yet Boone let Gil stay in after pitching coach Matt Blake visited the mound. That didn’t make much sense, but Gil struck out Raley on four pitches to protect a 2-0 lead, so what do I know? Boone then let him face righty Mitch Garver leading off the seventh, he got him on a fly ball, and then he walked off to a standing ovation.

➤ That’s when Gonzalez came in and he got one out into the eighth before he hit a batter, so Nick Burdi entered and he immediately created trouble by walking the bases full. Thankfully, the Yankees had tacked on three runs and led 5-0, but Clay Holmes had to put out the fire, and he did. On two pitches he got Raley on a groundout, then worked around two singles in the ninth to finish off a four-out save. Burdi now has nine walks in 9.2 innings, so that’s untenable. He has great stuff, his ERA looks excellent at 1.86, but he can’t keep walking guys like this.

➤ The Yankees are now 11-1 when Giancarlo Stanton homers in a game this season. And this was the 40th time since 2018 that Stanton and Aaron Judge have homered in the same game, and the Yankees are now 36-4 all-time when that happens. The Judge-Stanton duo stands fifth on the all-time list for the Yankees, breaking a tie with Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada. Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth homered in the same game an incredible 75 times, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle did it 56 times, Ruth and Bob Meusel 45 times, and Mantle and Maris 43 times.

➤ Volpe extended his hitting streak to 16 games, meaning he only has 40 more to go before he ties Joe DiMaggio. Hey, you never know. Ah, on second thought, as Ted Williams once said, “Joe put a line in the record book that will never be erased.” That has held true for 82 years and counting.

➤ Volpe started the three-run seventh when he led off by turning a single into a hustle double, and then stole third. That forced the Mariners to play the infield in and Juan Soto immediately hit a grounder into right field to score the run. Judge then ripped a double and Alex Verdugo and Anthony Rizzo hit sacrifice flies to make it 5-0.

➤ The Mariners had only nine hits in the last two games, none of those by Julio Rodriguez who went 1-for-17 in the series. He was so bad, Servais dropped him from No. 2 in the order down to No. 6 on Thursday.

The Yankees now embark on their first extended trip of the season, a three-city, nine game California swing through San Diego, Anaheim and San Francisco. It starts Friday night against the Padres who are 27-26 and trail the first-place Dodgers in the NL West by 6.5 games.

San Diego won a series in Cincinnati Thursday with a 6-4 victory in 10 innings and have now won five of their last seven games. Hit machine Luis Arraez, who the Yankees handled pretty well when they played the Marlins earlier this year, was traded to the Padres a few weeks ago and he’s been great. The defending MLB batting champ had four hits Thursday and is now hitting .341, second in MLB behind only Shohei Ohtani (.348), and he’s got a 28-game on-base streak going. In 17 games since coming to San Diego he’s hitting .419 with a .449 on-base.

The Padres also have other big-time weapons on offense in Fernando Tatis Jr. (eight homers), Manny Machado (still a threat despite his slow start with an OPS of .640), Jake Cronenworth (eight homers, 34 RBI), and Jurickson Profar who is having a breakout season hitting .337 with a .942 OPS. They did just lose second baseman Xander Bogaerts to an injury.

The pitching matchups will be: Friday at 9:40 on YES, Carlos Rodon (3.27 ERA) against Yu Darvish (2.08); Saturday at 9:40 on YES it’s Marcus Stroman (3.05) against Dylan Cease (3.05); and Sunday at 4:10 on YES it’s Clarke Schmidt (2.59) against Joe Musgrove (5.93).

Without question, this will be a tough way to start a long trip as the Yankees will see the top of the Padres rotation.

⚾ Paul Skenes, the Pirates pitching phenom, wasn’t quite as dominant in his third big league start Thursday as he was in the first two. In the first two, both against the offensively-challenge Cubs, Skenes struck out 18 men in 10 innings and in the second game, it was 11 K’s as he pitched six no-hit shutout innings. But Thursday, the Giants had a little more luck as they managed a run on six hits and he struck out only three in six innings.

He left the game with a 5-1 lead and seemed in line for his second victory, but then the Pirates’ awful bullpen took over. This time the main culprit was Hunter Stratton who gave up five runs in the eighth including a three-run jack to Matt Chapman that got San Francisco within 6-5, and then an RBI single to Wilmer Flores that tied it. The Pirates brought in Aroldis Chapman with a man on first and he immediately wild-pitched him to second, then a passed ball moved him to third from where he scored on a Brett Wisely game-winning single.

It had been shaping up to be such a nice day in Pittsburgh because the reason they were up 5-1 early is that former Giants catcher Joey Bart - who flamed out when he was considered to be the heir apparent for retired Buster Posey - hit a grand slam against his old team. Alas, the Pirates always find a way to ruin nice things, don’t they?

How about this: In each of the three games in this series, the winning team rallied from at least four down. In baseball history, it’s just the fourth time that’s ever happened in a three-game series, and just the second since 1896. I mean, wow. Also wow, how the stat nerds finds these obscure things.

⚾ The Phillies have been a machine. They’re now 37-14 as they completed a three-game sweep of the defending champion Rangers. That’s the best start to a season since the 2001 Mariners opened 39-12 on the way to an AL-record 116 wins. Phillies manager Rob Thomson was asked about the start, and the former Yankees coach shut it down quick.

When told it was the best start since those Mariners, Thomson didn’t blink as he said, “What did they do at the end?” Yeah, they lost the ALCS to the Yankees. “You’ve got to keep going. You just got to keep grinding, keep pushing all the way through.”

Thursday, Zach Wheeler was great as usual, seven innings of two-run ball to lower his ERA to 2.53 and lower the Phillies’ rotation ERA to an MLB-best 2.64.

⚾ When the Cardinals swept the Orioles early in the week, it was the first time Baltimore had been swept in 106 consecutive regular-season series, a crazy stat for sure. It was the Yankees who last swept the Orioles May 16-18, 2022, and a couple days later the Orioles called up No. 1 prospect Adley Rutschman, so the St. Louis series was the first sweep of his MLB career.

Thursday, the Orioles got back on track against the punching bag that is the White Sox, winning 8-6 as Rutschman drove in three runs and Jorge Mateo hit a three-run homer. They still have three more to play in Chicago while the Yankees are getting a much tougher test in San Diego, but the Yankees have a three-game cushion as the weekend begins.

⚾ In a game that absolutely no one cares about, it was quite a show between the A’s and Rockies. Oakland snapped an eight-game losing streak by beating Colorado Tuesday, lost on Wednesday, and then on Thursday, this happened:

The A’s trailed 4-0 after six innings but scored four runs in the next three innings, finally tying it in the bottom of the ninth on a home run by Daz Cameron - son of former major leaguer Mike Cameron - who had just been called up from Triple-A in the morning, and hadn’t played an MLB game since 2022 with Detroit.

Both teams scored their automatic runner in the 10th, the Rockies doing it against dynamic closer Mason Miller, his first run allowed in 19.1 innings. And then in the 11th, it was chaos. The Rockies scored four times, all off Miller as he suffered the same performance that Clay Holmes went through on Monday.

However, these are the 16-33 Rockies and they proceeded to blow the game as Oakland scored five in their half off the 11th for a 10-9 victory. JJ Bleday tied it with a two-run homer before Colorado even recorded an out, and later, after two singles and an intentional walk, Tyler Soderstrom literally walked it off by drawing a bases-loaded walk from Peter Lambert.