BALTIMORE — The good news for the Yankees is that they will not have to see Trevor Rogers in October.
The bad news is that the Orioles left-hander robbed them of a chance to pick up another game on the Blue Jays in their dimming hopes of claiming the division.
The Yankees mustered just one hit in six innings against Rogers, and then came up just short in their comeback attempts against the Orioles’ bullpen, falling 4-2 on Friday night at Camden Yards.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. crushed a two-run shot in the seventh inning to pull the Yankees within 3-2, entering him into the 30/30 club, but it was not enough as a pair of defensive errors doomed them in the bottom of the sixth, leading to a pair of runs that were the difference.
On a night when the Blue Jays were getting blown out by the Royals, the Yankees (86-68) couldn’t take advantage and remain three games back in the AL East with eight games to play (with Toronto owning the tiebreaker).
They still owned the top AL wild-card spot, leading the loser of the late Mariners-Astros game by two games and the Red Sox by at least two games, pending the result of their game against the Rays.
Rogers came into the night with a 1.43 ERA across 16 starts for the Orioles (73-81), having given up just 66 hits in 100 ²/₃ innings, posing a stiff challenge even against a lineup that has hit left-handers well this season.
The Yankees finally recorded their first hit off Rogers when Austin Wells led off the sixth inning with a single.
But left fielder Dylan Beavers robbed them of a chance to record their first run with a pair of terrific catches on back-to-back plays.
First he ran back and made a leaping grab into the wall to take away at least extra bases from Paul Goldschmidt.
Then he came in to make a diving snag on Aaron Judge’s sinking liner.
The Orioles then added to their 1-0 lead in the bottom of the inning when the Yankees’ defense failed them.
Jordan Westburg led off with a broken-bat comebacker to the mound, with a shard of his bat hitting off the bouncing ball and appearing to alter its spin, which allowed it to get through Will Warren’s legs for an error.
Gunnar Henderson came up next and hit a high chopper to second base, which Chisholm charged, fielded and tried to flip to first straight out of his glove because he likely did not have enough time to transfer the ball to his throwing hand.
But the flip was wild, getting past Goldschmidt and putting runners on second and third.
Both of those runs eventually came in to score, one on a sacrifice fly and another on a fielder’s choice off Fernando Cruz to make it a 3-0 game.
Chisholm gave the Yankees some life in the top of the seventh with his two-run homer, joining Alfonso Soriano (2002, 2003) and Bobby Bonds (1975) as the only three players in franchise history to hit at least 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in a single season.
But the Orioles got a run back in the bottom of the inning when Henderson hit an RBI double off Tim Hill.
The Yankees threatened again in the top of the eighth, putting runners on first and second with one out.
But Rico Garcia (who pitched one game with the Yankees in July) got Cody Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton to both ground out, squashing the rally.
Warren was coming off a rough outing against the Red Sox last Sunday in which he got tagged for six runs in the first inning.
But the young right-hander bounced back respectably, giving up three runs (one earned) across 5 ¹/₃ innings.
The only earned run came in the second inning, when Ryan Mountcastle took him deep for a 422-foot home run.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
