Bird’s slam, Gray’s pitching carry Yankees
Baltimore — Greg Bird hit his first career grand slam to back a dominating pitching performance by Sonny Gray, and the New York Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles 9-0 Wednesday night for a split of the four-game series.
Rookie Tyler Wade and Austin Romine also homered for the Yankees, and Giancarlo Stanton had four hits.
Facing Dylan Bundy (6-9) in the third inning, Bird launched a drive off the right-field foul pole to put New York up 5-0. It was the second night in a row he homered and had four RBIs.
Gray (6-7) allowed three hits, walked one and struck out eight over six innings. The right-hander had lost three straight starts, the last two in which he gave up a collective 11 runs over 4 [1/3] innings.
Facing the last-place Orioles couldn’t have come at a better time for Gray. He’s 3-0 with a 2.00 ERA against Baltimore and 3-7 with a 6.32 ERA against everyone else.
The victory enabled New York to improve to 5-5 against the Orioles this season. In this series, Baltimore won 5-4 and 6-5, and the Yankees’ wins were by a total of 17 runs.
In the pivotal third inning, Stanton singled in a run before Bird ended a nine-pitch at-bat by pulling a curveball down the line.
Wade went deep in the sixth, and Romine connected in the seventh. Wade’s long ball, his first in the big leagues, came on his 100th at-bat.
New York has 154 home runs this season, a major league record before the All-Star break.