The Yankee Series, April 28-30

[Frobby]

The O's currently are 1.5 games ahead of the Yankees, one game ahead in the loss column.    The Yankees have been playing great ball, outscoring their opponents 95-63 in 19 games played.     The Orioles have the better record, but have only outscored their opponents by 9 runs.    Here are this weekend's pitching matchups:

Gausman (1-2, 7.50) vs. Sabathia (2-1, 2.70)

Jimenez (1-0, 5.95)vs. Pineda (2-1, 3.86)

Miley (1-1, 2.08) vs. Montgomery (1-1, 3.78)

Gausman has been miserable in his last two outings, though he somewhat righted the ship last time out after allowing 4 runs (and 2 homers) in the first four batters.    He has historically done well against the Yankees (6-3, 2.24 ERA in 18 appearances, 12 starts), but struggled a bit against them on April 8, allowing 4 runs on 8 hits in 4.2 IP.   Sabathia, of course, is a long-time nemesis for us (19-10, 3.30 ERA in 39 starts).    He started in the Yankees' win over us on April 9, allowing 3 runs (2 earned) on 6 hits and getting non-decisioned.  

Jimenez made his season debut against the Yankees, allowing 5 runs on 7 hits in 4.1 IP, in a game the Orioles came back to win.    He is 4-5 with a 6.35 ERA against the Yankees in his career (12 starts).   We haven't seen Pineda this year; he is 4-3 with a 4.16 ERA against us in his career (12 starts).

Miley also made his season debut against the Yankees, a bizarre outing where he allowed only 1 hit and no runs but walked 7 batters in 5 innings of work.  Since then, he's been outstanding.   In his career, he's 0-3 with a 4.96 ERA against the Bronx Bombers in 8 starts.We've never faced Montgomery, a lefty who will be making his fourth major league start.

The Yankees are off to a good start with the bats despite the absence of Gary Sanchez and Didi Gregorius.   The two Aarons, Hicks (1.182 OPS) and Judge (1.024) have been on fire, and Chase Headley (.989) and Starlin Castro (.920) also have exceeded expectations.   The big disappointment so far has been Greg Bird, who was crushing the ball in spring training but went into a deep freeze (.459 OPS) as soon as the lights went on.

As always, the Yankee bullpen is top-shelf, carrying a ridiculous 1.51 ERA at the moment.   You expect Chapman (1.23 ERA) and Betances (1.29) to be great, but to a man, their whole staff has been killing it.   

Bottom line, our starting pitchers are going to need to exceed expectations this weekend, and our bats need to wake up and put some runs on the board early in these games.   

[Natty]

Time for Manny and Trumbo to hit these lefties hard and come out of their slumps. 

[backwardsk]

Are we sure Aquino is making a start?  MASN has Gausman on Friday.  

[Frobby]

12 minutes ago, backwardsk said:

Are we sure Aquino is making a start?  MASN has Gausman on Friday.  

Hmmm, looks like you're right.    Roch has it Gausman/Jimenez/Miley.    I guess I will go back and edit the OP.

[Natty]

Yanks won last night. We have a 1 game lead. 

[Tx Oriole]

On 4/27/2017 at 0:36 PM, dan-O said:

An extremely tough series. We can't continue to get by with 1 or 2 run wins and very little offense for much longer. Gonna pay that debt eventually. 

True but I not going to worry about it now.