Monday night Orioles gamethread: at Yankees

Kevin Gausman gets the start for the Orioles tonight, and the fact he's the Orioles' second-best starter at the moment speaks volumes about the Orioles' rotation. Nobody cares about pitcher wins, but the fact is, he's only got one of them. One. How do you do that with this offense?

Anyway, if Gausman pitches the way he has this year thus far - 1.304 WHIP, 4.28 FIP, 8.5 K/9IP, 2.0 BB/9IP and 1.6 HR/IP, they O's have a fairly good chance of winning this game. A 1,3 WHIP over six innings is about 9 base runners total, he'd expect to have six strikeouts, one walk (maybe two) and will probably give up a home run while allowing around three runs.

Against Ivan Nova in 2016, that SHOULD be plenty good for the O's to win. Nova's been bad. Not "OK with a few bad games" bad, but "Bud Norris the spring of 2015" bad. OK, maybe not THAT bad, but you get my drift. His FIP is bad at 4.86, he's averaging 12 base runners per nine innings pitched and his ERA is a pretty bad 5.18. So he hasn't exactly been getting unlucky. He's just not great this year.

The Yankees enter today 8.5 games behind the Orioles in the American League East. A series split, let alone a win, will probably solidify the Yankee's position as sellers at the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline. Make it so.