Yanks Sweep the Birds In the Baltimore Bandbox

Certain people who hate the Yankees, especially Met fans, claim that Yankee Stadium II is "a little league park," where it's too easy to hit home runs. They forget that the short porch in right field gets canceled out by "Death Valley" in left and center.

If there's "a little league park" in the American League East, it's not The House That Steinbrenner Built. Nor is it Fenway Park, the little green pinball machine in Boston's Back Bay: Center and straightaway right field offset the Green Monster in left field and the right-field corner. It's Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the Baltimore bandbox.

Baseball giveth and baseball taketh away: Will the 2026 Yankees ever have their starting rotation fully healthy? Max Fried went on the Injured List on Tuesday, but Carlos Rodón came off it. He was only risked for 4 innings and 66 pitches, and he allowed 1 run.

But the bullpen was fantastic. Yerry de los Santos allowed just 1 hit in 2 innings, Brent Headrick got out outs and Fernando Cruz the 3rd in the 7th, Paul Blackburn pitched a hitless 8th, and David Bednar pitched a perfect 9th.

That performance deserved run support. Trent Grisham provided it, as he hit a home run in the 3rd, and singled 2 runs home in the 7th. Yankees 3, Orioles 1. de los Santos was credited with his 1st win as a Yankee, the 2nd win of his career.

Will Warren started on Wednesday night as if he was debuting off the IL, allowing 2 runs in 4 innings. But, again, the bullpen did the job, allowing just 1 run the rest of the way. The Yankees picked up 2 runs in the 2nd inning and got a homer from Ben Rice in the 3rd.

In the bottom of the 3rd, Pete Alonso homered for the Orioles. In the 7th, with the scored 3-3, the man the Mets let get away last off-season after becoming their all-time home run leader -- just barely surpassing the total Derek Jeter had for 10th place on the Yankees' list -- came up again, and hit a drive down the left-field line. Most observers, those in the ballpark and those watching on TV, thought it landed fair. To me, it looked like the ball scraped the foul pole, which would have made it a home run. But the umpires ruled it foul, and after a video review, they upheld the call.

Yankee-Haters online went ballistic. Met fans on Facebook were saying the umpires were fixing the game in favor of the Yankees. Which is ridiculous: Since when have the umpires favored the Yankees, rather than their opponents?

The Orioles melted down in the top of the 8th. With 1 out, Cam Sanders hit Heliot Ramos with a pitch, and walked Jazz Chisholm. Sanders struck Spencer Jones out, but then he hit José Caballero to load the bases. Oriole manager Craig Albernaz took him out, and brought in Yennier Cano (no relation to Robinson). George Lombard Jr. hit a grounder to 3rd, and Coby Mayo fielded it, but couldn't make a play at any base, and Ramos scored to make it 4-3. With Austin Wells up, Cano threw a wild pitch to score Chisholm.

That 5-3 margin made Alonso's would-be home run meaningless, and held up as the final score. Headrick, who pitched a perfect 7th, was the winning pitcher.

Gerrit Cole pitched like an ace last night: Limited by his injury rehab to 6 innings, he allowed 1 run on 4 hits and 1 walk, striking out 8. Ryan Yarbrough, not exactly having impressed me so far this season, pitched 3 perfect innings to finish the game off.

The Yankees picked up 3 runs in the 3rd, got home runs by Luis García Jr. and Jones in the 6th, and an RBI triple by Chisholm in the 8th. Yankees 6, Orioles 1.

The Yankees have 35 games left in the regular season. In the American League Eastern Division, they trail the Tampa Bay Rays by 4 games, both straight-up and in the loss column. The Boston Red Sox are 8 games behind, the Toronto Blue Jays 14, and the Orioles 15 1/2. The race is far from over.

The Yankees begin a 3-game home weekend series tonight, against those pesky Blue Jays. Come on you Pinstripes!

Citi Series Wrapup: Yankees Embarrass Mets, Who Embarrass Themselves

Dr. Francis Young, who calls himself a "Historian of religion and belief," has said, "Anglicans obsessed with the papacy (I’m one of them) are the ecclesiastical equivalent of Americans obsessed with the British monarchy - the strange phenomenon of people being obsessed with the one thing whose repudiation defines their existence."

Sort of like Mets fans, forever obsessed with the Yankees.

The father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, had an expression: "The vanity of small differences." This explains many local rivalries: The people on each side are more similar than they would care to admit, so the differences they so have get blown out of proportion, or even made up altogether, as lies.

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In the Citi Series at Yankee Stadium II that concluded last night -- remember, a regular-season series is not a Subway Series -- both teams work camouflage-"colored" caps in honor of Armed Forces Weekend.

Carlos Rodón started the Friday night game. He didn't allow a single baserunner over the 1st 3 innings, and the Yankees gave him 4 runs in the bottom of the 3rd. Well, the Mets helped, thanks to an error by Francisco Lindor. It led to an early exit for Met starter Tylor Megill. The Yankees scored 2 more in the 4th.

But Rodón allowed a run in the 4th, and a walk in the 5th led Aaron Boone to think it was time to go to the bullpen for the 6th. Jonathan Loáisiga, back from Tommy John surgery that limited him to 1 appearance all last season, and that 1 very early, made his 2025 debut, and kept the Mets from scoring in the 6th.

Mark Leiter Jr. did so in the 7th, and so did Devin Williams in the 8th. (Of course: He wasn't the closer. It was still pressure-packed.) Yerry de los Santos got into trouble in the 9th, allowing 2 walks and an RBI double by Lindor. Luke Weaver had to be brought in to get the last out. Yankees 6, Mets 2.

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On Saturday afternoon, Clarke Schmidt repeated Rodón's feat the night before, of going through the 1st 3 innings without a baserunner, and getting a lead, on a home run by the back-from-injury DJ LeMahieu. But, like Rodón, he faltered in the 4th, allowing 2 runs. Cody Bellinger tied it by leading off the bottom of the 6th with a home run.

Leiter relieved Schmidt in the 7th. Tim Hill and Fernando Cruz combined to hold the Mets off in the 8th. But in the 9th, with 1 out, Cruz walked a batter, gave up a single, and hit a batter, before Lindor hit a sacrifice fly to give the Mets the 3-2 win.

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Last night, on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball, would decide the series. Max Fried started, and pitched decently for 6 innings. The game was tied 2-2 going into the bottom of the 8th.

My grandmother was from Queens, a Brooklyn Dodger fan who became a Met fan. The thing that bothered her the most was errors; next, walks.

Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you, especially the leadoff variety. Met reliever Ryne Stanek started the inning by walking Jasson Domínguez. He struck LeMahieu out, but gave up a double to Austin Wells. Jorbit Vivas was up, and he hit a grounder to Met 1st baseman Pete Alonso. He's the guy Met fans call "the Polar Bear" and consider to be a better power hitter than Aaron Judge. Alonso threw in the direction of home plate, but wide, and Domínguez scored.

That would have been embarrassing enough for Met fans, if that had been the end of it. That wasn't the end of it: Paul Goldschmidt singled Wells home. Met manager Carlos Mendoza brought Génesis Rodriguez in to relieve. In a manner of speaking, he also issued a leadoff walk, since he walked the 1st batter he faced, Trent Grisham. He struck Judge out, dropping Judge's batting average for the season to .401.

Judge must have softened Cabrera up for Bellinger, who hit a grand slam deep to right field. This made the much-maligned Williams the winning pitcher, as Tim Hill pitched a perfect 9th, and the Yankees won, 8-2. The Yankees had taken the series. They had humiliated the Mets, and the Mets had humiliated themselves.

Postscript, added after posting: I didn't mention Juan Soto at all. He got booed plenty, and went 1-for-10 with 3 walks and 2 stolen bases. Judge went 3-for-12 with 3 walks. Currently, without Soto batting in front of him, Judge is batting .401 with 15 home runs and 41 RBIs; without Judge batting behind him as "protection," Soto is batting .246 with 8 homers and 20 RBIs. And, on the Mets, he's behind both Alonso and Lindor in being "The Man."

As we say here in the New York Tri-State Area, I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

Postscript 2: In the Mets fan blog Faith and Fear In Flushing, Jason Fry said this about Bellinger's grand slam: "It would have been a flyout in a park with dimensions not suited for a flea circus, but that’s sour grapes: The fences were the same distance when the Mets were hitting, and they didn’t hit a single ball out of Yankee Stadium this weekend."

That's right. They didn't. The Mets had Soto, they had Alonso, they had Lindor, and they had others, and, in 27 innings, they couldn't hit one single home run in that "little league ballpark." So maybe it's not as easy as it looks, fellas.

Or maybe the Yankees are simply good enough to turn all MLB stadiums into "little league ballparks."

Or maybe the Yankees just have better pitching. Nah, none of the Flushing Heathen would ever admit that.

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Anyway... 

We are 28 percent of the way through the regular season. The Yankees are in 1st place in the American League Eastern Division, 5 games ahead of both the Boston Red Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays, 6 ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays, and 11 1/2 ahead of the Baltimore Orioles.

The Yankees have today off, and welcome the Texas Rangers to The Stadium tomorrow. The Mets? What is their punishment for humiliating themselves? They have to go play the Boston Red Sox, in Fenway Park. You will never find a more disgusting hive of scum and villainy.

The Yankees host The Scum on June 4, 5 and 6; and go to Scum Town the following weekend. The rematch with the Mutts will happen at Pity Field on July 4, 5 and 6 -- with the 4th of July holiday providing a rare post-Opening Day occurrence of an entire series of day games.