Clay Holmes hit Heston Kjerstad in the head with a pitch. Brandon Hyde didn’t like how the Yankees dugout reacted to this.
The Orioles finally scored a run on Friday night. That one run was all they got. They lost, because their pitchers and defense were not collectively perfect, prolonging the team being stuck in the grip of some malevolence that has been crushing them all month. The 4-1 defeat at the hands of the Yankees shaves the O’s division lead down to a single game as the final pre-All-Star break series continues.
For eight innings of the game, that was the only story worth talking about. The Orioles offense is in dire straits, with particularly poor results following after getting a man or even multiple men into scoring position for the last several games.
In the ninth inning, Yankee closer and undeserving All-Star Clay Holmes hit Heston Kjerstad in the head with a pitch. Anyone who wants to make an excuse for Holmes can probably note that it was raining in Camden Yards for the ninth inning. We cannot know intent, only the result, and the result was a 97mph fastball that ricocheted off the ear flap, with Kjerstad slowly falling down to the dirt afterwards.
This was the 62nd batter who has been hit by a Yankees pitcher this season. The team leads the league in the category, with 22 more HBP by their pitchers than the average team. In spite of this reality, it is the Yankees who start whining when their pitchers hit other players.
This appears to have happened again on Friday night. After manager Brandon Hyde came out to check on Kjerstad before he went down to first base, someone in the Yankee dugout initiated a shouting match which Hyde continued, running towards the opposing dugout, pointing, and yelling. I can’t stress enough that it was not the HBP itself that provoked the response.
Following Hyde’s movement in that direction, both benches emptied. players doing the usual routine of running up to mostly stand around in opposing clumps. No real physical violence – other than Holmes’s fastball to Kjerstad’s head – appeared to be exchanged over the course of the situation playing out. Hyde just yelled at Boone, who yelled back, and eventually the situation calmed down. Hyde was ejected.
Kjerstad was removed for a pinch runner before the benches-clearing incident. It is fairly clear that the Orioles wanted to be cautious in case there were any concussion symptoms that the “stand up at home plate and walk down to first base” step did not immediately reveal. It’s good to be safe. It will suck if Kjerstad, one of the only decent hitters lately, has to miss any time because the team that hits other players the most struck again. After the game, the team said Kjerstad will be in the concussion protocol.
Grasping at straws because there is little else to cling to lately, Orioles fans might offer themselves hope that this incident will be the thing that sparks some kind of fire that has been missing over the course of the current four-game losing streak. The offense is collectively lifeless. Individual Orioles are making poor plays in the field that you have to wonder are the result of some kind of tiredness and lack of focus.
This stuff played out again in the earlier innings on Friday night, before all of the excitement. One culprit was Anthony Santander, who played a line drive right at his feet into a single when he could have just taken one step forward and caught the ball. Later, Santander played a single into an effective triple, taking a two-base error because of a ball that got past him that had no business getting past him.
Are these things why the Orioles lost? No. They’re just what made the loss extra painful. You could understand the fact that they only got six hits in a game that was started by Gerrit Cole, where Cole, assisted by his catcher fooling the umpire into a generous strike zone, looked like he was returning to the Cy Young form he had a year ago. That would be frustrating but understandable. It’s that plus the 0-for with RISP in the Cubs series, followed by a 1-9 with RISP on Friday night.
Something is not right just now. Or else they are just having some of the worst cluster luck possible, nothing needs to change, and the Orioles will be perfectly fine. As the saying goes, you’re never as bad as you look when you’re losing. It’s hard to say for sure, except about the losing. They’re definitely doing that.
Cade Povich took a crack at stopping the Yankees while all of this other stuff was going on. Much like the last time he faced the Yankees, he managed to walk five batters while in the game. Unlike the last time, he was not able to limit the damage from so many runners reaching base. The Yankees had him on the ropes early on, loading the bases in the first inning, scoring two runs on three straight hits in the second.
It could have spun out into a disaster from there, and to Povich’s credit, it did not. That’s not to say he was flawless after this. Aaron Judge swatted an exceptionally poor 0-2 pitch from Povich up over Walltimore for his 33rd homer of the season. At this moment, the Yankees held a 3-1 lead.
Oh, right. The Orioles actually scored a run! Here’s how it happened: Kjerstad led off the second inning with a single. He then stole second base, a silly looking double feet-first slide that saw Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe land on top of Kjerstad after fielding a high throw, with Kjerstad then brushing aside Volpe with one arm. Only after Volpe had removed the tag did Kjerstad’s feet come off of second base. This happened while Cedric Mullins was in the process of striking out.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter that much what base Kjerstad was on, as long as he was on a base. Ramón Urías sliced a fly ball towards the corner in right field that bounced off of Juan Soto’s glove as he overran the play. Though Soto recovered quickly and the ball did not get far away from him, Urías managed to get a triple on the play, and an easy RBI. (Yes, yes, there is no guarantee that if Kjerstad still stood on first base, that Cole would have thrown the precise pitch and Urías made the precise swing that generated this outcome.)
If only Urías could have shown speed like that later in the game. The fifth inning saw Mullins reach second base on a single, advancing on a Volpe throwing error. Urías hit a bouncer headed towards up the middle that second baseman Gleyber Torres snagged and threw to first. Urías was out by a half step or so. Most runners might have been safe but this one has 31st percentile sprint speed. It could have been a first and third, no one out situation. Instead it was man on third, one out. Neither Gunnar Henderson nor Adley Rutschman cashed this in.
Later, Urías batted with a man on first and one out and hit a soft grounder back to the pitcher, at that time Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle. Most other runners could have gotten to first before Kahnle’s throw nearly pulled first baseman Ben Rice too far from the bag to tag it with his foot after the catch. Again, Urías. Not to harp on him alone. Everybody failed a little bit, except for recent random reliever addition Burch Smith, who threw 1.1 scoreless innings. Great work, Burch.
Anyway: Povich’s final line was 5.1 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 5 BB, 6 K, 1 HR. It’s a lot of walks. I give him some credit for getting through 5.1 when he was near a second inning disaster. It doesn’t much matter who is doing what on the mound when the 1-5 hitters in the lineup go 2-19. Whatever is happening, these dudes need to get it together.
The series continues on Saturday afternoon. The Yankees send Luis Gil to the mound. The Orioles have rocked him once and been rocked by him once this season. Pitching for the O’s is Grayson Rodriguez. It’s a 4:05 scheduled start. Maybe all of the excitement will have woken the batters back up. Or maybe not.