The Yankees won their seventh straight game on Friday, demolishing the Astros to the tune of 12-4 thanks to the entirety of their infield hitting home runs. The win came with a cost, as Giancarlo Stanton left in the sixth inning after appearing to aggravate something in his leg while running the bases, but the prospect of a Stanton IL stint in any season is more of an inevitability rather than a possibility at this point. Hopefully it’s nothing major and he’ll be back after a short recovery period,
but the Yankees will have to press on in the meantime.
Thanks to their success on the diamond though, the rest of the field is once again pressured to play catch up. With one rival covered by their own play, how did the rest fare?
Baltimore Orioles (13-13) 10, Boston Red Sox (9-17) 3
The Red Sox are reeling, and after getting swept by New York they took another gut punch as they traveled down to Baltimore. The Orioles greeted Brayan Bello with a barrage of hits, totaling 13 against Boston’s starter and scoring eight runs in just 3.1 innings, and five of those hits left the yard. The fireworks started right away with Gunnar Henderson leading off and pulling one 410 feet, and Adley Rutschman followed suit with a two-run shot to right. Pete Alonso flew out for the first out of the inning, but Dylan Beavers launched the third homer of the frame to make it 4-0 in a hurry.
Wilyer Abreu got one back with a solo shot in the second, but a Rutschman grounder restored the four-run lead in the bottom half. Then in the third, Samuel Basallo became the fourth Oriole to take flight with a solo shot, and in the fourth Rutschman capped off the scoring against Bello with — surprise — another homer, and yet another two-run blast. The home team was quite literally firing off more fireworks than they could’ve expected, as they had a display set up for each bomb they hit on the night, and they didn’t end up prepared for how well they’d do.
The physical fireworks may have run out, but the bats didn’t. Coby Mayo made it six homers for the birds with a leadoff shot in the fifth, and Rutschman concluded his six-RBI night with a base hit to score one in the seventh. The eighth inning was uneventful for a change, one of just two innings where the Orioles didn’t score all game, but it hardly mattered by that point. The Red Sox had no answer for the onslaught, dropping their fourth straight game and six of their last seven.
Cleveland Guardians (15-12) 8, Toronto Blue Jays (10-15) 6
It was apparently en vogue for AL East rivals to go down a bunch of runs early on Friday, because the Jays followed suit in their matchup with Cleveland. The Guardians put up a five-spot in the first inning, starting off strong with a Daniel Schneeman leadoff blast. The Jays managed to get to two outs without surrendering any more runs, but George Valera made it 3-0 with a two-run double and Angel Martínez launched a two-run shot to keep the rally going.
Toronto clawed a good portion of that back quickly though, getting two runs in the bottom of the first with Jesús Sánchez hitting a solo homer before Kazuma Okamoto hit one of his own in the second. Martínez struck again in the third, however, clubbing another two-run shot to give Cleveland the eventual game-winning runs. It didn’t stay a laugher though, as the Jays continued to close the gap with runs in the fifth and sixth innings to make it 8-6. Then in the ninth, the first two batters managed to get aboard to bring the winning run to the plate. Unfortunately for Toronto, that batter was a pinch-hitter in Eloy Jiménez who promptly hit into a double play to effectively kill their chances at a walk-off. Davis Schneider popped up to officially end it a batter later, dropping Toronto back to five games under .500.
Other Games
Tampa Bay Rays (14-11) 6, Minnesota Twins (12-14) 2: The Rays managed to buck the trend of the rest of the division, instead steadily building their lead throughout the game. Junior Caminero started them off with a solo shot in the first inning, and Nick Fortes led off the third with a double and came around to score on a groundout to make it 2-0. The fourth inning saw Jonathan Aranda add to the mix with a home run, and while the Twins finally got on the board with a Brooks Lee solo homer in the fifth the Rays got it right back with another Aranda blast in the sixth. Caminero put up the only crooked number of the game with a two-run homer in the seventh inning to ice it, as the Twins managed only a garbage time Royce Lewis solo homer in the ninth.
Cincinnati Reds (17-9) 9, Detroit Tigers (14-13) 8: The Tigers are clawing their way back from an early slump, but they ran into a barnburner in this one against a very good Cincy squad. Detroit jumped out to a 5-0 lead after the fourth inning thanks to homers from Riley Greene and Javier Báez, but the script flipped starting in the fifth inning. Matt McLain hit a two-run shot to get the Reds on the board, Nathaniel Lowe hit a solo shot in the sixth to cut the lead down to 5-3, and then LcLain hit another homer in the seventh to tie it. Lowe later reached on an error that scored a run to put Cincinnati ahead, and Tyler Stephenson hit an RBI double to push them ahead 7-5.
That wasn’t the end of things, though. Detroit answered back in the eighth, with Spencer Torkelson and Kerry Carpenter hitting home runs to take the lead back and go up 8-7. Then in the ninth, Cincinnati went down to their last out before getting the tying run aboard and brought Lowe to the plate as the winning run. Lowe delivered, launching the walk-off homer to keep the Reds tied for the best record in baseball.
Athletics (14-12) 8, Texas Rangers (13-13) 1: The A’s continue to hold onto the AL West lead with an outburst against the Rangers, scoring all eight of their runs on five home runs including three in the first inning. Carlos Cortes got a hold of two of them, joining in the initial derby in the first before providing a three-run shot in the fifth inning. That was plenty enough for old friend Luis Severino, who pitched 6.2 innings of one-run ball and handed it off to the Athletics ‘pen for a scoreless end to the blowout.
Seattle Mariners (12-15) 3, St. Louis Cardinals (14-11) 2: The Cardinals outhit the Mariners eight to four in this game, but the only offense St. Louis could capitalize on came in the fourth inning when Masyn Winn hit a two-run single. Seattle, on the other hand, managed to find three opportunities to score despite the meager contact: Randy Arozarena doubled in the second and scored on a Cole Young single, Josh Naylor walked and later scored on a Dominic Canzone single in the fourth, and Naylor homered into the Cardinal bullpen in the sixth.
