What a great Idea to switch starters CC Sabathia and Sonny Gray around. The Yankees are sending baseballs this week into the seats at an alarming rate. Maybe It will continue today and show Gray that his team can give him a bunch of runs. It will also keep CC off of that turf in Toronto this week. Sparing those beleaguered knees of any more stress. Nice Idea except for the fact that the Yankees didn’t inform Buck Showalter and Ubaldo Jimenez of the plan.
Gray went four innings giving up five runs. Three on an eighty four slider to Tim Beckham in the fourth inning that ended up in the left field bleachers over the Orioles bullpen. The Oriole bullpen was safely tucked inside and never in danger. See they had taken their shoes off and were relaxing as they watched their starter Jimenez mow down the Yankees for five innings. He threw one hundred pitches yet only fifty four for strikes. So how did he have only one walk and ten strike outs in those five innings? How can a guy with a 6.57 ERA keep this power line-up from putting holes in the scoreboard? When Gray exited the game, the Yankees had only three hits and one run.
The Yankees managed to put two more runs on the board before the ground crew came out for the YMCA in the seventh inning, one more in the eighth and made it interesting when after a bright spot over the past few weeks Jacoby Ellsbury doubled with one out in the ninth. Showalter took a chance and intentionally walked Aaron Judge who represented the tying run with Gary Sanchez coming up and two outs. But Ace Zach Britton struck him out to end the game. Aside from another home run by power hitting clean-up hitter Didi Gregorius in the second inning, the Yankee bats were dead again. Speaking of new found power by Didi, what is up with all the home runs this year? The FBI needs to do an autopsy on what appears to be a juiced up ball.
So much for the great Idea of switching starting pitchers. Gray just didn’t have it today. And on a day where the bombers couldn’t score more than four runs on six hits, he suffers yet another loss. Sonny Gray. That sounds like an oxymoron. I mean what were his parents thinking about when they named him? On a beautiful sunny day in the Bronx, where the Yankees gave out replicas of the 1977 World Series rings, to ten thousand of the 38,189 in attendance, it was another Gray day at the stadium.