Yankees 6, Orioles 4: Swept out of town

Here are some ugly stats for you:

• The Orioles are now 1-14 on the road against the AL East this season. With three games @ Boston coming up this weekend, they could easily be 1-17 by Monday.
  
• The Orioles have lost their last 10 games on the road against the Yankees.
  
• After scoring 21 runs in three games vs the White Sox (and still losing 2 out of 3), the Orioles managed only 9 in three games vs the Yankees.
  
• In this three game series, the Yankees scored a total of 12 runs. 5 of those runs scored were by players on base via walk.

Ok enough of that. So the Orioles just got swept, but just how bad was it? Well, it was bad. Game one featured great pitching and no offense. Game two featured awful pitching and mediocre hitting. Game three featured bi-polar pitching and bad offense (at least until the Yankees decided to give the struggling Brian Bruney a chance in the 9th)

With the imminent promotion of Chris Tillman, Jason Berkan was pitching for his job today. Like David Hernandez before him, Berken had trouble getting out of the first inning. I chalked David Hernandez's up to nerves about pitching at Yankee Stadium for the first time. I suppose it could be the same for Berken, but for some reason I'm not feeling very charitable about it. Perhaps it's because Hernandez was able to work out of his jam but Berken ended up allowing 4 runs. It took him 31 pitches to get out of the inning and it looked like he wouldn't be long for the game. Considering Rich Hill had forced the bullpen to work 5 innings yesterday, that didn't bode well.

After the first inning, however, Berken looked like a new pitcher. He pitched a total of 6 innings on 89 pitches. If you take out the 31 pitch first inning, he averaged 11.6 pitches per inning.  In those five innings he allowed just three base runners. Jorge Posada hit a solo HR in the third, Nick Swisher walked in the fourth, and Robinson Cano singled in the 6th. At the rate Berken was going I'm surprised he didn't go out for the 7th. If you just check the box score today, it'll look like Jason Berken pitched another lousy game. And as far as results go, he did. 6 ER in 6 innings is very bad. But the way he pulled himself together was a little impressive. It certainly made me wish that we'd see Rich Hill be the one to get the boot when Tillman is called up.

Cla Meredith made his first appearance as an Oriole today. He started his O's career by hitting Brett Gardner. You hate to see the lead off man get on, but throwing at a Yankee is always at least partly acceptable. He followed that up by striking out Derek Jeter. He then allowed a single to Johnny Damon but got Mark Teixeira to line into a double play.

The offense today was the Nick and Adam show. The Orioles were held scoreless by A.J. Burnett until the 7th inning when Robert Andino (remember him?) led off the inning with an infield hit. Adam Jones followed that with a double to put runners on 2nd and 3rd and one out. Nick Markakis plated Andino with a sacrifice fly, then Adam scored on a wild pitch. Then in the 9th inning, with the Yankees winning 6-2 and two outs, Adam and Nick hit back-to-back HR. That forced the Yankees to bring in Mariano Rivera, who predictably struck out Aubrey Huff to end the game.

The rest of the hitters were kind of sucky. ZAUN went 2-3 with a walk and Luke Scott had a hit and a walk, but that was it. The Orioles left 9 men on base today and leave New York at a season awful 12 games under .500