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Post by kaybli on Jun 18, 2024 15:40:24 GMT -5
Important series with our main rivals for 1st place in the AL East! No lineup out yet. Boone is attending his son's graduation so Brad Ausmus will be managing. World is Ben Rice will be in the lineup.
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Post by kaybli on Jun 18, 2024 15:55:57 GMT -5
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Post by noetsi on Jun 18, 2024 16:04:47 GMT -5
Whoever wins this one will have the best record in the league
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Post by laurenfrances on Jun 18, 2024 16:08:40 GMT -5
Hot and humid in NYC. I regret not taking a walk early in the day. It's just too hot to do it now. The air quality is poor. Yesterday I had a massive throat irritation with continuous coughing during my usual walk.. For some reason I couldn't fall asleep till 5AM.Getting 3-4 hrs of sleep time. Hope players are mindful to hydrate.
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Post by noetsi on Jun 18, 2024 16:10:59 GMT -5
It will get hotter every year. You should live in Florida where I do.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jun 18, 2024 16:15:06 GMT -5
Orioles starting lineup for tonight:
1. Westburg 3B
2. Rutschman DH
3. Mountcastle 1B
4. Henderson SS
5. Santander RF
6. Hays LF
7. Mateo 2B
8. Cowser CF
9. McCann C
10. Suarez SP
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jun 18, 2024 16:15:35 GMT -5
The Yanks come into the series reeling a bit for the first time in over a month, having been defensively undressed by the all-of-a-sudden Runnin' Red Sox. If Trevino can't throw any better than that, he won't be able to start at catcher much longer. Yanks have lost 3 out of 4, and the 3 1/2 game lead they held Saturday morning is down to a game and a half. They start a 3-game seies against an Orioles team that has suffered multiple key injuries to their rotation but has pushed right on through that mini-crisis so far by winning 18 of 24 since May 22nd, the day that John Means was injured, joining Dean Kremer in needing Tommy John surgery a day or two later.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jun 18, 2024 16:17:00 GMT -5
Tonight, the O's turn to veteran righty Albert Suarez, making a fantastic comback this season, 7 years after he last pitched in the majors. Signed as a Latin Free Agent by the Rays in 2006, he spent 6 years in the mioors without every getting above AA. He was seriously injured for most of the 2013 season, making just two starts. The Rays re-signed him as a free agent for one season in 2013, but he struggled again at AA ball, so at the end of the 2014, they let him go. The Angels signed him as a free agent for 2015; he pitched well in AA for them the entire season, but he was 25 and they had no room for him, so the Angels let him go, too. He signed for 2016 with the Giants. The Giants had him open the season at AAA in the bullpen, them moved him to the rotation, where he made 3 good starts, so they called him up. The Giants again put him in the pen, and he was OK, so they let him start. After a bunch of starts where he was OK, nothing more, they moved him back to the pen, and 4 games later, sent him back to AAA. They recalled him in late August, and he made 6 brief starts, going 0-4 with an ERA near 4.50. The Giants re-signed him for another year, but he spent the entire first half in AAA. In mid-July, they called him back up to be essentially a slag-srm long reliever; only 3 of his 18 appearances were in high-leverage situations. He did poorly, going 0-3 with an ERA over 5.00, and the Giants bid him goodbye, because the Diamondbacks drafted Suarez in that fall's Rule 5 Draft. Arizona could find no good use for him; he spent all of 2018 in AAA, making a few "opener" starts and 27 relief appearances, and pitching poorly.
With seemingly no options left in professional baseball in the United States, it was then that Suarez started his international tour. He pitched in the Venezuela Winter League for 4 seasons; 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2018. After the 2018 season he signed with the Yakult Swallows of NPB, he split time between their minor league and major league teams, pitching in long relief. In 2019 and 2020 he again split time between the two levels for Yakult, never pitching poorly, but never really breaking through to claim a regular rotation job. In 2022, he left Japan to pitch for Samsung in the Korean KBO. He pitched pretty well in both seasons, but again, was not a star. Feeling that he had done all he could in the Asian leagues, and with his age catching up with him and time running out, he signed a minor league contract with the Orioles this past offseason.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jun 18, 2024 16:19:53 GMT -5
After wowing people in spring training with his ability to dominate in those games, the O's put him at AAA to start the season. He made three starts at Norfolk, 2 were outstanding, one was poor, so the O's called him to the majors for the first time in 7 seasons (at age 34!) to take the 5th starter's job for a couple of turns until they got an injured starter back (I think it was Means, but it might have been Bradish). He again made two good starts an one poor one, so when the O's had their rotation back together, they move Suares to the pen, and he pitched very well there, allowing just 4 hits and 1 earned run in 10 innings. When the O's rotation was hit with the Kremer/Means double Tommy John whammy, the O's put him back into the rotation, and he's been outstanding in 4 short starts: 1-0 with a 1.40 ERA in 19 1/3 innings. On the season, in 7 starts and 10 relief games, he's 3-0 with a 1.61 ERA. In 44 2/3 innings, he's allowed 33 hits, 9 runs, 8 earns, just 1 HR(!), 14 BB and struck out 37. His WHIP for the season is an outstanding 1.052. Suarez has never faced the Yanks in his career, not even in the 4-game series in Baltimore seven weeks ago.
Repertoire: Suarez used to be a 5-pitch righty when he last pitched in the majors, but has junked his slider and sinker for a cutter since then. His FB is very high spin, and he gets good extension on it, so it plays way up from its slightly above average velocity, getting 3 inches more "run" than the average FB. His curve is mostly a change-of-pace distraction pitch; he uses it rarely. His cutter "stays up" better than average but has little horizontal break, similar to Kutter Crawford's cutter on Sunday night. His change drops less than average but has well above average tail arm-side. The pitch mix so far this season: FB averaging 95 about 53% of the time, cutter 86-7 about 23%, change 85-6 about 18% of the time, and the curve 78-9 about once an inning.
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Post by azbob643 on Jun 18, 2024 16:21:51 GMT -5
It will get hotter every year. You should live in Florida where I do. Pfft...lightweight. Forecast 115 by Thursday...BUT IT'S A DRY HEAT!!! |
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jun 18, 2024 16:26:05 GMT -5
Playing the name game...Albert...hundreds of Alberts in MLB history. The best player was the Hall of Famer, Tigers' outfielder Al Kaline, who won 10 Gold Gloves, got over 3000 hits, is 42nd all-time in career bWAR, pop 50 all-time in runs, hits, total bases and RBI, walks and times on base, and made 18 AL All-Star teams (although, in four of those years, there were two All-Star games and he made 7 of those 8 teams, so it's more accurate to say he was an All-Star in 15 of his 21 MLB seasons. Albert Belle might have had a slightly higher "peak", but Kaline's career was brilliant and almost twice as long.
To Yankees fans, their favorite Albert is Albert "Sparky" Lyle, who pitched brilliantly for the Yanks in 7 seasons in relief, saving 141 games, pitching over 100 innings 5 times, making 4 All-Star teams, and winning the AL Cy Young Award out of the bullpen in 1977. Perhaps his greatest moment as a Yankee was in the ALCS in 1977. Trailing 2-1 in games heading into Game 4, the Yanks got another poor, short, post-season start from Ed Figueroa, and Lyle had to come into the game in the 4th inning to face George Brett to try to end a rally. He got Brett to lineout to left, the finished the last 5 innings (try that today!), throwing just 50 more pitches (imagine that!) allowing just 2 hits and no runs, and got the win, evening the series at 2. But he wasn't done. A marathon relief appearance would force any contemorary reliever to sit for at least 2, maybe 3 days, but in Game 5, the next night, Ron Guidry struggled and Billy Martin brought starter Mike Torrez into the game in the 3rd inning, even though Torres had started game 3 just two days before. Torrez heroically battled through 5 1/3 innings allowing no runs, keeping the Yanks close. Down 3-2 in the 8th, Torrez ran out of gas, walking two batters. In came Lyle, to strike out Cookie Rojas, and then after the Yanks rallied for 3 in the 9th to take the lead, 5-3, he gave up a one-out single to Frank White. With Hal McCrae and George Brett due in next, Lyle got Freddie Patek to roll over on a slider to Nettles, who started a 5-4-3 DP to end the series. (In a very sad scene, Patek was crying on the Royals bench after ending his team's season.) Lyle had thrown 11 pitches and gotten 4 outs the day after throwing 54. As both Torres and Lyle showed, they was men in those days, children.
For this brilliant, heroic performance in 1977, Boss George rewarded Lyle by signing Goose Gossage to basically take the closer's job away from Sparky. Shortly after, he made it up to Sparky by signing him to a fairly hefty three-year extension for a 35 year old lefty reliever, but after the 1978 season, with Gossage now entrenced as the closer after wrapping the division tie-break game at Fenway (the Buchky Dent game), the ALCS and the World Series, the Yanks traded Lyle to Texas with 4 other players for Juan Beniquez, and four prospects including a then unknown hard-throwing lefty named Dave Righetti. Righetti would himself become the Yankees' closer in 1984, but only after throwing a no-hitter against the Red Sox on July 4, 1983, the first one by a Yankees' pitcher since Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series.
There are 8 other Suarez' in MLB history; the best of them is the current Diamondbacks thirdbaseman, Eugenio Suarez, who's hit 250 HR in his 11 year big league career and gotten downballot MVP votes in two seasons.
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Post by bumper on Jun 18, 2024 16:27:39 GMT -5
great to see rice getting a shot. think they'll give him time to settle in. actually also gives an option behind the plate. always like seeing the kids getting a chance. DJ will probably remain mostly at 3B with cabrera backing up. nestor was good last time out in a game he should have won.
have lost 3 of 4 and need to right the ship. anything less than a series win is unacceptable.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jun 18, 2024 16:30:21 GMT -5
The Yanks are taking advantage of yesterday's off day to move Cody Poteet to long relief for the next day or so, and starting Nestor Cortes on the normal 4 days' rest to activate Gerrit Cole off the IL and insert him into the rotation on his normal 4 days' rest tomorrow evening. Cortes has had a pretty good comeback season after his injury-ruined 2023, finally breaking his road game jinx in his last start, 7 strong innings against the Royals in KC last Thursday. On the season, Cortes is 3-5 with a 3.59 ERA. In 15 starts, he's thrown 87 2/3 innings, allowing 80 hits, 36 runs, 35 earned, 12 HR, 18 BB and struck out 80. His WHIP this season is an excellent 1.118.
In his career, this is his 9th start and 11th appearance against the Orioles. His record against them is excellent, but compiled against mostly very bad O's lineups. He's 4-1 with an ERA of 2.45 against them. In 51 1/3 innings, he's allowed 38 hits, 14 runs, all earned, 4 HR, 14 BB and struck out 66. His WHIP against Baltimore is a brilliant 1.013, and their team quadruple slash line against him is .202/.257/.295/.555. He made a start in the big 4-game series in Camden Yanks seven weeks ago, and this much tougher O's lineup got to him for 8 hits and 2 BB in 6 innings, scoring 4 runs. He struck out 5 and took the L in a 4-2 O's win.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jun 18, 2024 16:32:00 GMT -5
Yankees lineup vs. Suarez: He's never faced them, but three Yankees have faced him when he was with the Giants. One is Anthony Rizzo, who's on the IL now. The others are...
Stanton, who is 0-1
LeMahieu, who is 1-7
On the bench: None
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Orioles' lineup vs. Cortes:
Westburg is 0-3
Rutschman is 8-15 with a double, 1 RBI and 3 K
Mountcastle is 3-21 with a double, 1 solo HR, 2 BB and 11 K
Henderson is 1-7 with an RBI, 2 BB and 6 K (!!)
Santander is 2-14 with a double, 3 BB and 6 K
Hays is 4-20 with a solo HR, 6 K and 1 GIDP
Mateo is 4-13 with a double, 2 BB and 4 K
Cowser is 1-3
McCann is 2-10 with a double, 1 RBI, 2 K and 1 GIDP
On the bench: Mullins is 2-21 with 9 K, Urias is 2-9 with a double, a BB and 2 K, and O'Hearn is 1-3 with a K.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Jun 18, 2024 16:32:45 GMT -5
Yesterday, the Yanks had the day off. The Red Sox did not run the Jays off the field as they did to the Yanks on Sunday (in fact, Jays' catcher Jansen was 2-2 throwing out basestealers). Instead the Sox knocked out Jays' starter Yusel Kikucki, crushing four home runs off him for 5 runs in his 4 innings, and crusing to a 7-3 win at Rogers Centre in Toronto. Nick Pivetta made it through 7 so-so innings, allowing 9 hits and 2 HR, but just 3 runs, and evened his record at 4-4. The Yanks, the O's and the Rays had the day off.
Going into tonight's action, the Sox are 1/2 game closer and the Jays are a 1/2 game further back than they were after Sunday: The O's are 1 1/2 behind the Yanks, the Sox 11 1/2, the Jays 14 and the Rays 15 games out of first.
Elsewhere in the AL East today: The Sox and Jays square off for the 2nd game of their series in Toronto at the same time as the Yankees start, more or less. Tanner Houck, 7-5 and 2nd in the AL in ERA to Luis Gil at 2.08, matches up against Chris Bassitt (6-6, 3.56 ERA). Bassitt had a rough April (except for his start vs. the Yankess, natch), but has pitched very well since then. In his last 5 starts, Bassitt is 3-0 with an ERA of just 1.20 in 30 innings. At 7:40 pm in Minnesota, the Rays play the 1st game of a series against the Twins. Aaron Civale (2-5, 5.20 ERA) starts for the Rays, and the Twins counter with struggling ace Pable Lopez (6-6, 5.33 ERA). Lopez had a decent game against the Rockies after the Yanks beat him up at the Stadium 12 days ago.
And at 7:08 or so this evening, it's Suarez vs. Cortes at the Stadium.
Pre-game filibustering over with it, I go to make dinner before tonight's game. See you guys later.
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