After feasting on the Baltimore Orioles in Friday’s opener, the New York Yankees will be looking to dine on seconds in Saturday’s rematch with their AL East rivals. The thunderous bats for the Yankees seemingly put the opener out of reach early, but then the Orioles caught fire late and nearly caught up. They'll have an even tougher time in holding off New York with Gerrit Cole taking the mound as the starting pitcher opposite of Baltimore’s Jordan Lyles.
The Yankees nearly gave it away on Friday.
They were up by four runs late into the opener before a three-run homer by Anthony Santander put the Orioles within one run of tying the game. Of course, the Yankees’ relievers clamped down in the end and snuffed out any hope the Orioles had left.
That’s something Gerrit Cole has a long history of doing to opposing teams when toeing the rubber. The veteran righty is throwing a 3.02 ERA and 0.98 WHIP on the season. He dazzled in his last outing against the Boston Red Sox after completely dominating and holding the Cincinnati Reds scoreless.
But there was no dazzling in his last run-in with the Orioles.
An eight-inning marathon outing ended in Cole yielding eight hits and five earned runs in a loss to Baltimore. We’ll see if he can turn things around in the rematch at the Camden Yard s against an Orioles team ranking in the bottom-half of the league in hits and runs.