A game where the Orioles go up against a starting pitcher carrying an ERA above 5, whose team has had an unbelievably anemic offense so far this season, is one you might circle and think that they should win. You would be right about that. Naturally, they were instead shut out by the Yankees in an unsightly 7-0 loss.
How did they manage to get shut out for seven innings by CC Sabathia? That's the real mystery. They didn't lack for chances, with ten at-bats in the game where they had runners in scoring position. From this they got one measly hit, a Ryan Flaherty single that was not even able to plate the runner coming from second.
Knowing as we do that the Orioles scored zero runs, it almost doesn't matter that the Yankees scored seven. Even one run would have been enough to beat the Orioles tonight, and there was no way that Tyler Wilson was ever going to pull a shutout, no matter how pathetic the Yankees offense or team in general may be.
They Yankees are so pathetic that for much of the first half of the game, our counterparts at Pinstripe Alley on Twitter were just posting pictures of their followers' dogs. That's a dark pit of despair and one that delights me to know that Yankees fans are feeling, and will probably go back to feeling soon after the temporary excitement of this win fades.
But as for this game, well, it sucked. Wilson did keep the Yankees off the board for five innings and in very efficient fashion, tossing only 69 pitches to get that far into the game. That's nowhere near what you would figure to be the danger zone, so of course there was no one warming behind him even as he got into a little trouble.
The Yankees big rally started with a Jacoby Ellsbury single with one man out. Ellsbury stole second and took third on a Brett Gardner single. The immobile Carlos Beltran lifted a fly ball out to not-especially-deep center field that was caught by Adam Jones. However, Jones double-clutched before getting a grip on the ball and Ellsbury scored without even a throw to the plate.
If Jones bobbled and that's why he didn't make the throw, that's one thing, but the non-throw on a ball where even a fast runner had no business scoring uncontested is another data point - along with his .205/.287/.295 batting line - to make you wonder whether Jones is fully healed.
Anyway, that was the first Yankees run. They scored more on Wilson, who walked Mark Teixeira and had another run cross the plate when Brian McCann added another single. Then, when Wilson finally got the tapper in front of the mound that should have ended the rally, he bounced his throw to first, Chris Davis could not corral it, and another run scored on the play.
Still, Wilson got through six innings and only allowed two earned runs - one of the runs being unearned due to his own error. I'll take a quality start, even a bare minimum one, from Wilson any time out. If the Orioles hadn't been pathetic against Sabathia, there would be no cause to be frustrated with Wilson.
Not that it mattered to the game's outcome, but the Yankees piled four more runs onto their tally in the eighth inning. T.J. McFarland began the inning, which was going to be his second inning of work, only he never got around to retiring any batters in the inning. He faced three of them. All reached base and two scored before McFarland was relieved by Dylan Bundy.
Things didn't go so much better for Bundy, who gave up the inherited run and ended up loading the bases himself, surrendering in order, two singles, a walk, and a hit by pitch to force in a run of his own. Bundy did get one strikeout. That might make some people happy.
So this one sucked. The Red Sox took down the White Sox in Chicago, putting them back in first plate in the AL East, which also sucks. Manny Machado didn't suck, getting two doubles to raise his AL-leading slugging percentage to .673. At least that's something.
The bad news is that the Orioles get to face Masahiro Tanaka tomorrow. That's one you would probably look at and kind of circle as a loss waiting to happen. Maybe they'll surprise us. Kevin Gausman will be the O's starter looking to outduel Tanaka in the 7:05pm game.