Alonso's Two Homers, Beavers' Slam Bury Yankees 10-2 in Series Opener

Yankees 2, Orioles 10, and the game was basically over by the fourth inning.

Baltimore came into the Bronx already eliminated from the playoff race, which apparently nobody told Pete Alonso. He hit two home runs, drove in three, and turned what looked like a modest afternoon matchup into a laugher well before the seventh-inning stretch. Dylan Beavers put an exclamation point on it with his first career grand slam. The New York Yankees managed just two runs on a night their bullpen never really got tested because their offense never made it a game.

The Turning Point

It only took one swing to flip this one. With two outs in the third and Beavers aboard on a walk, Alonso took Brendan Beck deep to left, and in the time it took that ball to land, New York went from a slight favorite to a 32 percent underdog. That's the kind of single at-bat that decides a series opener.

The fourth inning made sure nobody forgot it. Christian Franklin lined a single through the right side for the first RBI of his career, and two batters later Beavers unloaded a grand slam to right-center. Just like that, it was 7-0, and the Yankees' win probability had cratered to 3.4 percent. Ballgame, for all practical purposes, with five innings still left to play.

Star of the Game

Alonso was the whole story. He went 3-for-5 with those two homers (his 42nd and 43rd of the season) and three RBI, and the second one wasn't cheap -- a 471-foot blast to left-center in the seventh that had defenders in both dugouts turning around to watch it land. By win probability, nobody else in this game was close to as valuable as Alonso was on this particular Friday.

Beavers deserves his own paragraph too. A grand slam is a grand slam any night, but his first career slam coming against the Yankees, in a game his team had no business needing to pad the score in, says something about how thoroughly this one got away from New York.

Key At-Bats and Pitching Lines

Beck's day was rough from the jump. Recalled from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre that same morning to make the spot start, he lasted five innings and got tagged for seven earned runs on six hits, including both Alonso and Beavers going deep off him. Eight strikeouts is a nice number on the stat sheet. It doesn't mean much when the final line reads 0-2 on the season.

Trevor Rogers, working the other side, wasn't spectacular either -- four innings, five hits, four strikeouts -- but he didn't need to be with that kind of support. He closed out his regular season at a 4.03 ERA. Albert Suárez came on and was the one who actually shut the door on New York, four scoreless innings with five strikeouts to pick up the win and improve to 3-0.

The Yankees' lineup wasn't lifeless. Heliot Ramos tripled and scored, Amed Rosario drove in a run, and Anthony Volpe went 2-for-4 (against a Baltimore pen that had zero reason to ease up on a team already down big). Those are just the kind of scattered good at-bats that show up on a night your starter allows seven and your team can't string together enough of them to matter. Paul Goldschmidt's ninth-inning sac fly made the final score look a little less embarrassing, and that's about the nicest thing to say about the last few innings.

The Beck Call-Up

Calling up Beck to open a series against a team still capable of scoring in bunches (eliminated or not, the Orioles clearly weren't mailing it in) was always going to be a gamble on a short-notice spot start. It didn't pay off. Whether that's a one-game blip or a sign the rotation depth is thinner than the Yankees would like heading into the stretch run is a question for the next time his name is in the lineup card.

New York is 92-68 now, 4.5 games back of Tampa Bay, and this loss snaps a stretch where they'd taken three of four from the Rays. One bad night against a team with nothing left to play for shouldn't change the math much. Game two of the doubleheader is still ahead tonight, and there's a quick chance to make sure this one doesn't turn into two.