Once again the New York Yankees (93-68) flexed their muscles as they defeated the Baltimore Orioles 6-1 on Saturday in Yankee Stadium. The Bronx Bombers knocked three homeruns out of the ballpark, giving their announcer Michael Kay multiple opportunities to say, “see ya!”. They also caused an early exit by Orioles’ starter Tomoyuki Sugano (10-10).
Sugano left the game in the fifth inning with one out and Ryan McMahon on first. He was the victim of an Aaron Judge solo homerun in the first inning, a Giancarlo Stanton solo homerun in the second and finally a McMahon solo homerun in the same inning as well. Tagged with the loss, Sugano allowed 4 runs on 5 hits with 3 strikeouts across 4.1 innings. He threw 73 pitches (48 K’s) in his final start of the 2025 season and had just one clean inning, the third, where he got Trent Grisham and Ben Rice to flyout and Judge to lineout.
Speaking to reporters after the game through Team Interpreter Yuto Sakurai, Sugano said, “Obviously, the first third of the season, I felt like everything went too well and the middle part of the season there was a like a wall where I hit. Overall, I got to experience a lot of things.”
Pitching in relief of Sugano, Grant Wolfram proceeded to walk the bases loaded before allowing a 2-RBI single to Judge, adding a run to Sugano’s line, and a RBI sac fly to Cody Bellinger.
Yaramil Hiraldo pitched a clean sixth inning with a pair of strikeouts while Carson Ragsdale allowed a hit and struck out two across the seventh and eighth innings. Ragsdale today looked much different than the pitcher fans saw on Sept. 14th in Toronto when he allowed 8 runs on 9 hits with a homerun allowed, a walk and 2 strikeouts over 3.0 innings.
Once again the Orioles’ bats were relative no-shows as they produced just two hits, a Gunnar Henderson double in the fourth and a Tyler O’Neill single in the sixth, off Yankees starter Cam Schlittler (4-3). In 7.0 innings of work Schlittler walked 1, hit 2 batters and struck out 9; he struck out every Oriole hitter in the lineup at least once with the exception of Jackson Holliday, O’Neill and Coby Mayo.
Mayo provided the lone highlight on offense when he hit the first pitch Yankees reliever Paul Blackburn threw in the eighth 389 ft. to left center for his 11th homerun of the season.
During the month of September Mayo is hitting .314/ .407/ .571 with 3 doubles, 5 homeruns, 10 runs scored, 8 RBI and 9 walks but has struck out 24 times.
Regarding the offense’s woes Interim Manager Tony Mansolino had this to say, “Tough situation with that the last couple months for that group of hitters. We know and it’s well-documented at this point, and we are incredibly accountable for it that we need to get that fixed. So not acceptable by any means.
“The league is tough. We have faced tough competition, but so has everybody else and we’re aware of that. And that’s really gonna be for this organization what has to get done is making that priority No. 1 here this winter is grabbing that group of young hitters and getting them back on track.”
Holliday, however, expressed his optimism for 2026 when asked, saying that “I’m pretty confident. I think everyone in this clubhouse isn’t exactly having the year that they would want or think that they can have. So for us to kind of have a down year and still put up a pretty decent season, I’m pretty confident in this team.”
The Orioles loss allows the Yankees’ quest for another AL East crown to live for one final day.
A win on Sunday would deny the Yankees the AL East crown as well as prevent the Orioles from equaling the record they achieved in 2017.
2025 Record: 75-86
Next Game: Sun. 9/28 @ 3:05 pm vs. Yankees in New York