The Orioles blanked the New York Yankees 7-0 at Camden Yards on Wednesday. One hit. Zero runs. Two errors. And the only thing anyone in pinstripes wants to know now is what Max Fried's elbow scan says on Thursday.
That's the whole thing, really.
The Elbow Problem
Fried lasted three innings. His line was rough -- 5 hits, 3 earned runs, 61 pitches -- but the number that matters is three. Three innings from your ace, pulled with left elbow posterior soreness while the score is already 3-0. The Yankees have him heading to New York Thursday for imaging. (Nothing about that sentence is calming.)
Coby Mayo's RBI double in the second had started the bleeding. Adley Rutschman's sacrifice fly and Pete Alonso's single in the third had pushed it to 3-0 before Fried walked off. Anthony Volpe booted a ball in there, too. Whatever you thought this game was going to be, it was done by the time Paul Blackburn came in to pitch the fourth.
Bradish
Kyle Bradish was really good. That's not a complicated sentence, but it's the right one. Six innings. One hit. Zero runs. Three walks. Seven strikeouts. He'd struck out 10 against Oakland the week before, and his curveball has been an absolute weapon since coming back from Tommy John surgery -- somewhere around a 50% whiff rate, his spin ticking back up toward where it was before the procedure.
He had a no-hitter going into the fifth. With one out, Jazz Chisholm Jr. fought off two consecutive curveballs and drilled the second one into the gap for a double. That was the Yankees' only hit of the afternoon. Chisholm jogged into second and probably deserved a bigger ovation than he got from the visiting dugout. (He'd been taking heat from the fanbase all week batting .201 through 41 games -- the double was at least something to point at.)
Bradish walked off to a Camden Yards ovation after the sixth. That's now two straight impressive starts. The Yankees had outscored Baltimore 39-10 in a four-game sweep earlier this month. Wednesday felt like the Orioles saying they remember.
Rutschman, Briefly Confused
In the fifth inning, Rutschman got into a Blackburn pitch and sent it toward the right-center wall. Spencer Jones tracked it back, went up, and the ball clipped the tip of his glove on the way over the fence.
Rutschman didn't know it had gone out. He jogged toward second base figuring he'd popped up to the warning track. The grounds crew had to wave him home.
Two runs scored. Score was 5-0. (Jones had to stand out there and process that in real time. Not the best afternoon for him.)
The Nine-Hole Hitter
Blaze Alexander batted ninth and had the best game for either team. Three hits. Two runs scored. Two RBI. He bunted for a single to lead off the third, stole a base, scored on Rutschman's sacrifice fly, then poked a two-run single in the sixth off an outside offspeed pitch from Blackburn to push the final to 7-0.
Aaron Judge went 0-for-4. Ryan McMahon struck out twice. The middle of the Yankee order didn't do much of anything. This wasn't just a bad day for the starter -- the offense gave Bradish no reason to sweat at any point.
Five of Six
The Yankees dropped to 27-17. Still 2.5 games back of Tampa Bay in the AL East, still sitting comfortable in the Wild Card -- five losses in six games is concerning, not catastrophic. Baltimore took the series 2-1.
The imaging results Thursday will tell us whether Fried's elbow is a blip or something with a longer timeline. Right now, that's the only question that matters coming out of Camden Yards.
Jimmy writes the Bronx Pinstripes game recap after every Yankees game. Beat-reporter pacing, fan's heartbeat. He calls opposing players by last name and has no patience for dead-air innings.
