Orioles hammer Yankees for 12 hits in 10-2 spring win

Even in spring training, it's always a good day when the Orioles beat the Yankees. They did so on Saturday afternoon, scoring early and often on the way to a 10-2 victory on the road against a Yankees team that was playing a good number of its regulars.

When you are able to get a five-run second inning, that helps. The Orioles slapped Scott Baker silly in the inning, racking up five runs on five hits in Baker's only two innings of work. There will probably not be a whole lot of opportunities to beat up Baker in the regular season as the Yankees, much like the O's, did not send one of their A-listers to the game.

On the bright side, an actual Yankees A-lister, CC Sabathia, gave up a couple of home runs to the Pirates Triple-A club in a minor league game.

Back to happenings in today's Orioles game: The Yankees were stymied for the first four innings by Tyler Wilson, who was called upon to make the start likely so the Yankees wouldn't get a look at a regular starter. Wilson gave up only one hit in four scoreless innings, striking out two batters. As a reward for his good performance, he was optioned to Norfolk following the game. Keep it up and we'll see you in Baltimore next year, Tyler.

Over the whole of the game, the Yankees only managed to get three hits. Two of them were home runs. One of these came off the bat of Stephen Drew against Rule 5 pick Jason Garcia. That was the lone hit Garcia allowed in two innings of work. He also walked two batters and struck out two. Garcia has walked a whole lot of people in spring training. His spring innings were scoreless up until the Drew homer, but he's always had runners on.

The other Yankees home run came in the seventh inning. After a brief delay in the game to allow for the Yankees to have the opportunity to exhume the corpse of Alex Rodriguez, Brian Matusz gave up a first-pitch home run to Rodriguez. I made up that part about the delay in the game and also about the part about the corpse exhumation. The home run on the first pitch really happened.

On offense, the Orioles racked up 12 hits against Yankees pitchers. The star of the day was Alejandro De Aza, whose three-run home run in the second inning really broke the game open. De Aza later added an RBI sacrifice fly. Steve Clevenger had himself a nice day, going 3-3 with an RBI sacrifice fly to his credit. Chris Davis and Jonathan Schoop both had multi-hit games and one Orioles batter even walked twice in the same game. Is that allowed? I guess it's allowed.

Sunday afternoon brings twice the Orioles spring training fun. There will be simultaneous split squad games, one at home against the Twins and one on the road against the Blue Jays. The home game will be on the radio in Baltimore on 105.7 FM, while the road game will be on TV and radio in Toronto but not here in Baltimore.