MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Big, big three-game series in Yankee Stadium beginning tonight, as the Baltimore Orioles take on the New York Yankees for the second time this season with plenty on the line, yet with close to nothing at all on the line as well. At least not yet.
It’s reminiscent of the old days, say the 1980 season, when these teams battled each other all through the regular season for a chance to make the postseason, capped by the five-game series at Memorial Stadium in mid-August that drew a Major League-record 253,636 fans, the largest single-series attendance in MLB history.
At the same time, it doesn’t remind you much of the old days at all, particularly the 1980 season, because in those days only the division champion advanced to the postseason.
In fact, the 1980 Orioles beat the Yankees in seven of the 13 head-to-head meetings, holding a plus-10 run differential and finishing the season with 100 wins. Yet the Yankees won 103 games and advanced to the ALCS as the Eastern Division champ. The Orioles took their 100 wins and their two 20-game winners and went home for the winter, as there were no wild-cards in baseball in those days – just two division champs in each league.
Now, of course, there are three division champs and three wild-cards in each league, so while this three-game set is going to be big, the sense of urgency for a three-game series in June is nowhere as high as it once was.
That said, the Yankees come in tonight as the top team in the AL East at 50-24, the best record in baseball, while the Orioles are 47-24, tied for the second-best record in baseball, 1.5 games back, but even in the loss column. The teams are also ranked 1 and 2 respectively in this week’s MLB Power Rankings, which doesn’t really mean much either in the big picture.
The teams met earlier in the season in Baltimore and the Orioles won three out of four, and have now won 21 consecutive series against the AL East, the last division series loss coming on April 9, 2023, which is absolutely mind-boggling.
The Orioles are also coming off two impressive series wins against the National League Atlanta Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies, who are now tied with the Orioles for the second-best record in MLB, while the Yanks are coming off a three-game series loss to the Boston Red Sox.
There are stars-galore on both teams – Aaron Judge and Juan Soto for New York, and Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman for Baltimore – but, naturally, when it comes to baseball, it comes down to pitching, and neither this series nor the rest of the season will vary from that. The Yanks are the No. 2-rated pitching team according to MLB, while the Orioles are No. 10, so that’s not too bad.
The Orioles pitching has been, as Leo Mazzone would say, “top shelf.” Yet since just last August, the Orioles have lost MLB’s top closer, Felix Bautista, as well as starter John Means and all-purpose Tyler Wells for the season to Tommy John surgery. And currently, they are without ace reliever Danny Coulombe and ace starter Kyle Bradish (for the second time this season), not to mention starter Dean Kremer, to elbow ailments.
The Yankees, who have been without their ace, last year’s Cy Young winner Gerritt Cole, for most of the season get him back on Wednesday as he makes his return against the Orioles, which will loom large on the immediate and big-picture scale of things.
Cole will duel with the Orioles’ rookie left-hander Cade Povich, who will be making his third big-league start.
We can break it down a million ways and every other way you want to, but it won’t do any good.
The Yankees will be favored to take this series for a number of reasons, and that’s understood, even though that doesn’t matter unless you spend too much time on your phone.
Two things about the Yankees, though, that I’ve noticed is their bullpen is nowhere as fearsome as it was just a couple of years ago; and while the top of their batting order is as fearsome as it gets, the bottom part of the order … not so much.
The few times the Yanks’ upper-half of the order has struggled, the Yanks have struggled.
The Orioles? Who knows what you’re going to see with this team, other than good baseball every day and night.
These guys are so good and so young, they just don’t seem to be bothered by it, and that’s because they’re smart, they’re composed and they are well-prepared. They’re ballplayers in the truest sense. They hit, they pitch, they defend through every pitch and every out. It’s a rock-solid lineup 1-through-9; and it is the best two-strike lineup I have seen in quite a long time, beginning with Jordan Westburg.
From the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, with the exception of the Yanks’ slide in the mid-1960s, Orioles-Yankees was one of the biggest deals going because it was the best of baseball in the East. In fact, until the Orioles organizational collapse in the late ‘80s, the Orioles were the only MLB team that had a winning all-time record against the Yankees.
Orioles-Yankees was electric, and was filled with tension – every pitch, every inning, every game. Take it from a kid who sat in sections 39 and 41 in the upper deck for a lot of them.
The series that begins tonight in the dinky new Yankee Stadium wants to feel that way, and hopefully it will be. It’ll be swell; it’ll be great, and all the games will count, which is the most important thing. The urgency, though, just isn’t the same.
Then, of course, what else is?
Don’t sell it short, though. It’s going to be a fun three-game series for somebody.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @MikeBurkeMDT