Yesterday we had a classic pitchers’ duel that was ultimately settled by a big two-run home run in the ninth for a Yankee victory. I wouldn’t exactly call today a pitchers’ duel — Patrick Corbin went 3.2 innings and Will Warren managed just one more out than that — but the end result was the same. Today, it was Ben Rice’s turn to play the hero, in an 8-3 Yankee win.
This felt like it was going to be a tough matchup for Will Warren. So much of what makes him good is his ability to deceive hitters into called strikes — he gets more called third strikes than any other pitcher in baseball. The problem is how aggressive the Blue Jays are in-zone, with only three teams offering at pitches in the strike zone as often as Toronto. That means a lot of those pitches other hitters might take for strikes, especially called third strikes, Jays hitters were able to make some kind of contact on.
The Jays touched 41 of 46 times they swung the bat against Warren, and while they weren’t all hits, those extended at-bats are how you end up throwing 98 pitches in just four innings. Three walks against a single strikeout, plus the eight hits he allowed even if some of them were just out of range or should have been errors — looking you dead in the eye, Amed Rosario — it really wasn’t his day. I don’t want to say that starts like this expose the problem with Warren but it does showcase the difference between a pitcher like him and say, Cam Schlittler. There’s just nothing like a whiff.
Off the pitcher’s mound, this was in many ways the Anthony Volpe game, as the much-criticized shortstop got it done at the plate and in the field, a scene we haven’t seen much of over the past two years:
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I give Volpe a lot of grief, centrally around how much his offensive approach vacillates. Seemingly from month to month he will alter between focusing on pulled fly balls, to lining the ball gap to gap. I tend to think he’s better focusing on the latter, and that’s where his two RBI came today. I hope this is the positive reinforcement he needs to truly commit, but if it’s not, at least he showed up in a big, close game.
Then again, in the eighth he swung through these sliders so, maybe he has a few more steps to go.
Fast forward to the ninth, and while I haven’t been worried about Ben Rice, he’d been on a bit of a cold streak with just a 28 wRC+ over the last week, and critically, a 63 percent ground ball rate. Perhaps nobody in baseball better exemplifies the value of pulled fly balls like Benny Barrels, it’s so important that he gets the ball in the air. He hadn’t done that for a little over a week. And then, boy did he:
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José Caballero was able to tack on some key insurance runs himself, taking this game from a save situation to a easy breather:
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Full praise to Cabby today, he’s managed himself really well while the Yankees have insisted on putting Anthony Volpe at the 6 as much as they possibly can. He’s played every position they’ve asked him to, managed to be a league average hitter, and a five-run game is much more preferable to a two-run affair. Earlier in the day Caballero continued to back up his “you’re so damn annoying” reputation:
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I love this stuff, I can understand why some fans might be annoyed, I can certainly understand why opponents get annoyed, but every time José gets rather particular about the pitch clock and rules around it, I pop.
The bottom of the ninth got a little hairy, with David Bednar allowing a single off Volpe’s glove and a double. With Vlad Guerrero Jr. looming in the on-deck circle though, Anthony redeemed himself snagging an Alejandro Kirk line drive to end the game and wrap up a series win.
The Yankees are now ten games clear of the third-place Blue Jays, and it’s only the third inning but the Rays are currently losing to the Angels, and that could push New York two full games ahead in the AL East. The team has managed themselves very well in the absence of the game’s finest hitter, and I’m curious how much, if any, credit will go to manager Aaron Boone.
Monday’s an off day, before the Yankees welcome the resurgent Chicago White Sox to town on Tuesday. Gerrit Cole is slated to get the ball with a 7:05 p.m. Eastern first pitch.
Box Score
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