Yanks' lineup more than just Oriole killers
THE Orioles pitching staff extends batting practice into games. They provide a Fantasy Island ambience for opposing lineups — dreams come true.
No one has enjoyed the kindness (or ineptitude) like the Yankees. They ho-hummed their way to another eight runs Tuesday to beat the Orioles 8-3.
Baltimore’s pitching is so non-major league as to distort stats. The Yankees are hitting a collective .307 with a 1.037 OPS while averaging 8.06 runs per game in going 16-2 versus the Orioles. For the Yanks, it is reminiscent of what the Red Sox did last year en route to a title.
Boston hit .295 with a .920 OPS, averaging 6.68 runs per game in amassing a 16-3 record against Baltimore in 2018.
For the Yankees, though, the reason to be upbeat about their offense is not due to bludgeoning one of the worst pitching staffs in history. It is that even subtracting the Orioles, their lineup has produced. The Bombers were averaging an MLB-best 5.98 runs per game. Remove Baltimore and the Yankees were at 5.61, which would still be third in the majors.
The Yankees are averaging an outrageous 3.33 homers per game against the Orioles. It was 1.53 versus all others, not far off the 1.65 last year when they set the major league homer record.
The Yankees’ last game against the Orioles is a Wednesday matinee and then they will take a U-turn from Fantasy Island. The next three series — 10 games — are against the Indians, A’s and Dodgers. Los Angeles led the majors in ERA by better than two-tenths of a run, the Indians were third and the A’s sixth. The Dodgers ranked second in surrendering the fewest homers per nine innings, the A’s were third and the Indians sixth.
This will offer the Yankees a touch of October in August, another chance to gauge whether their offense will handle a playoff season that distinctly will not include the Orioles. So far the Yankee lineup has handled all comers well. They have not been shut out in 203 straight games stretching to last year.
But for the Yankees their distribution has been better this year than last. Remember that if you score two runs and 10, the average is six runs, but you are probably a .500 team because you lose most times you score two. In 2018, even while racking up 100 wins, the Yanks were held to three runs or fewer 28.4 percent of the time. It is 23.1 this year.
Part of that reflects that run scoring is up overall in 2019. But the Yankees have made themselves a tougher offense to hold down inning after inning because: 1) there are just no soft spots and 2) they have added batting average while not losing power.
The latest Yankees victory — even with the pinata Orioles as the opponent — was illustrative. The Orioles actually outhomered the Yanks 3-1 Tuesday, but every member of the home team’s lineup, amazingly except Gleyber Torres who has 13 homers this year against Baltimore, either scored or drove in a run. And Torres hit one of the 11 balls the Yankees struck better than 100 mph as the Yanks never endured a 1-2-3 inning.
The Yankees began Tuesday with 14 players with more than 160 plate appearances, 12 of whom had an OPS-plus of 103 or better. Remarkably none was Miguel Andujar or Giancarlo Stanton, who tied for second in Yankees OPS-plus last year at 131 (minimum 160 plate appearances).
Among players with 325 plate appearances, two Yankee additions, LeMahieu (.337) and Gio Urshela (.336), rank 1-2 in the AL in average (Urshela was 20 plate appearances shy of qualifying). The Yankee collective average is .273 compared to .249 in 2018 (.266 this year versus the non-Orioles). The additional batting average has provided different ways to score without homers and to get on base in front of the homers — “traffic” is a favorite word of Aaron Boone.
Essentially the Yankees have had a long lineup with a greater variety of ways to generate runs. That has enabled them to live well on Fantasy Island. But the Orioles disappear from the 2019 schedule for good after Wednesday. And we will see if this offense can maintain the fantasy.