The Yankees scored double as many runs as the Orioles in their July 4 win

The Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles 8–4 at Yankee Stadium on Independence Day. Harrison Bader and Gleyber Torres each drove in two runs and Torres scored three of the Yankees’ eight runs.

The have now won the first two games of the series against the Orioles and have scored a combined 14 runs in these two games. This run scoring is an improvement since they have scored 14 runs in these two games after scoring just 12 runs in the three game series against the Cardinals that saw them lose two out of three.

This two game winning streak means that they are just two games behind the Orioles for second place after being four games behind Baltimore before the series began. The Yankees are now 10 games above .500 and eight games behind the Rays in the division.

In Game One of the series on Monday, the Yankees won 6–3. The Orioles had a 3–0 lead after the third inning but then the Yankees scored six unanswered runs to win the game.

Domingo German was far from perfect in this game after throwing a perfect game in his previous start. German is the fourth Yankees pitcher to throw a perfect game and each of the three previous years a perfect game was thrown in Yankees history the team won the World Series. He had a perfect first inning but then in the second he allowed three consecutive singles to start the inning and the Orioles took a 1–0 lead on a Cedric Mullins single.

German faced 21 batters (4.1 innings) and allowed nine hits with two earned runs (three overall) in this game.

The Yankees bullpen got the last 14 outs holding Orioles without a run. German’s perfect streak came to an end the first batter in the second inning.

Nick Ramirez, Ian Hamilton, Tommy Kahnle and Clay Holmes combined for no runs and just three hits over 4 2/3 innings. The Yankees bullpen has a league-best 2.82 ERA after Monday’s game.

In the fifth inning, Anthony Volpe and Kyle Higashioka hit back-to-back home runs to make the score 3–2 Orioles. The Yankees had back-to-back homers 17 times last season. That was one shy of the team record that was set in 1996.

Giancarlo Stanton’s double to the wall was about six inches from being a homer and would have been a homer in 23 stadiums. That double with an out in the 6th was the first hit by the 1–4 hitters so far in the game. Harrison Bader, who went to high school in The Bronx, and Josh Donaldson popped out to strand Stanton.

The Yankees had their 11th sellout of season in Monday’s game.

Volpe scored easily on a wild, wild pitch on an overthrown sinker by Yennier Cano to tie the game at three. He throws in the high 90s and has absolutely dominated this season since he has a 1.32 ERA, a 0.85 WHIP, just six walks in 41 innings and zero homers allowed.

Bader hit a long 3-run home run to the second deck in left field to give the Yankees a 6–3 lead, which was his first homer since coming off of the injured list. He smashed the high hanging curve ball that was thrown by Danny Coulombe. Bader is an impressive 17–49 with RISP with the Yankees after Tuesday’s game.

The one negative from this game is that DJ LeMahieu went 0–4. He now has the fifth lowest OBP in the American League this season. After this game, he was 2–15 in four games in July after going 10–58 (.172) in his 16 games in June. He has a .221 average and a .287 OBP after having a .261 average and a .357 OBP last season.

Before the July 4 game, the Yankees honored Sarah Langs and others going through the debilitating ALS disease as part of HOPE Week (Helping Others Persevere and Excel) on the 84th anniversary of Lou Gehrig’s Luckiest Man in the World speech. Langs’s parents threw the first pitch and Sarah, who is a MLB researcher and statistician with a love for baseball with MLB Network, exchanged lineup cards with the umpires in her wheel chair.

The game was delayed 38 minutes due to thunderstorms in the Bronx. They honored other woman dealing with ALS on the field and Aaron Boone, Gerrit Cole and Langs did a joint interview before the game where Langs talked about how she reacted to getting told she had ALS and the awareness she wants to spread through her platform. Langs has been an inspiration in raising money and bring awareness to ALS as she has continued to work at MLB and find revealing stats as her condition has unfortunately worsened in the last few years.

While she was on the podium doing her interview before the game, Cole surprised Langs and invited her parents to throw out the first pitch before the game.

“This is so important to put a spotlight on young woman with ALS to show that not everyone looks like Lou Gehrig, but even Gehrig, as I have been saying a lot the last month, is not your typical case,” Langs said. “He was much younger than the average ALS patient. He was not in that normal demographic either so anything we can do to shine a light on this disease, the funding it needs and the incredible people who are involved in this community, I am just so grateful and so grateful to this organization.”

Cole presented Langs with a signed Baseball is the Best shirt on behalf of the team. Baseball is the Best is Langs’s popular saying on Twitter and the shirt with that saying is a shirt dedicated to her with proceeds going to ALS research. They gave one signed shirt to Sarah and the other to be auctioned off for Project ALS. The Yankees help a lot of worthwhile people and organizations during HOPE Week each season and this is another example of this giving back that the team does.

Kyle Gibson got the start for the Orioles and he had the seventh highest ERA in the league coming into this July 4 games. His ERA was 4.86 coming into this game since he had allowed 11 earned runs in his previous two starts. He threw seven shutout innings against the Yankees in Baltimore on May 25 but the Yankees had more success against him this time since the Yankees scored four runs in six innings against Gibson this time.

He is signed to one year 10 million contract and is surprisingly the highest paid player on the Orioles. Baltimore has a lot of really good young players so they will have to decide soon which ones to give costly contracts to and which ones they will trade away or let leave in free agency.

Anthony Rizzo was the leadoff hitter for the first time this season and got a four pitch walk to start the game. Gleyber Torres then hit a long 2-run homer on pitch up in the zone to the second level of the bleachers in left field for his 13th homer (second among AL second basemen) and 36th RBI (third among AL second basemen). In 71 games against the Orioles in his career, he has an impressive 21 homers. After Torres hit that homer there was a very good chance the Yankees would win since the team is 71–22 in games Torres has homered.

In the fourth inning, to give the Yankees a 4–0 lead, Isiah Kiner-Falefa hit a sacrifice fly to score Jake Bauers. Kiner-Falefa went 1–3 in the game and Bauers went 1–2. In the fourth inning, the Yankees were fortunate to score a run without having a hit.

In the first inning, Bauers came close to hitting a homer off the wall but it went half way up to easily get a double. He was then stranded at second since Bader and Volpe struck out in consecutive at-bats.

Clarke Schmidt had a dominant 2.55 ERA in his last eight starts, which was the fifth lowest in the AL in that span. In that span, he lowered his ERA from 6.30 to 4.37. He just needs to get better in day games since coming into today he had a 6.39 ERA in day games but a much better 3.16 ERA in night games. His ERA is now 4.43 after allowing three runs in five innings in today’s start.

His fastball has been much better including his new cutter that he has started throwing this season. He used his cutter to strikeout Mullins in the 5th inning. Schmidt was able to get his second win in a row after not getting a win in games that he allowed zero, two, one, zero and one run in the eight-game span because of little run support.

Yankees are 27–12 in games Bader has played in this season and far under .500 at 21–26 in games he has not played in. This proves how the valuable the elite centerfielder who is having an improved season at the plate is to the team. The Yankees won the July 4 games and Bader went 1–3 with two RBI.

In 39 games this season, Bader has five doubles, seven homers, 28 RBI, a .263 average, a .482 slugging percentage and a 110 OPS+. He was much less productive last season since in 86 games he had 10 doubles, five homers, 30 RBI, a .250 average, a .356 SLG% and a below league average 86 OPS+.

In the seventh inning, when the Yankees had a 5–3 lead, Bader had a big two-run double down the first base line with two outs in the seventh to give Yankees a 7–3 lead. Earlier in the seventh inning, Jose Trevino had a big homer the other way to right to about the second row to make the score 5–3. That was Trevino’s fourth homer of the season and he had gone just 2–16 in his previous six games.

Former Yankee Aaron Hicks blasted a solo homer to the first few rows of the bleachers in right field in the fifth inning to get the Orioles on the scoreboard. He was 1–20 with Yankees at Yankees Stadium this season and now after that homer was 2–6 with Orioles at Yankee Stadium. He definitely got a lot of joy from that homer since he had repeatedly been getting booed by the Yankee Stadium crowd in this series. The boos did not really make sense since he is not on the Yankees anymore.

Oswaldo Cabrera then misplayed a ball that led to a double by Jordan Westburg. Adam Frazier then had a hard hit 2-run homer to tie the game. Schmidt had retired 13 of the first 14 Orioles. That misplay by Cabrera, who is a converted infielder, did not come back to haunt the Yankees since after the Orioles scored three runs in the fifth, the Yankees scored the final five runs of the game to win 8–4.

Ron Marinaccio got a big pop up to shallow center with the bases loaded to end the 6th inning.

The bullpen, which has the best ERA in the league, pitched well again in this game since four relief pitchers combined to throw four innings and allow three hits and one earned run. It could have been zero earned runs if an error was charged to Albert Abreu when he missed stepping on first base in the ninth inning.

Tommy Kahnle had a hitless and scoreless inning but allowed two walks. He has a very impressive scoreless streak to begin his season. In his 14 games pitched this season he has not allowed a run while allowing just five hits in 13.2 innings pitched. In addition to only allowing five hits in his 13.2 scoreless innings, he has allowed just four walks and has 16 strikeouts, which is more than one per inning.

He is now tied for third in most consecutive scoreless games by a relief pitcher to start a Yankees season. Lee Guetterman is first with 19 consecutive scoreless games (1989), Andrew Miller is second with 17 consecutive games, Mariano Rivera (2008) and Kahnle are tied for third and Edwar Ramirez (2008) and David Robertson (2012) are tied for fifth with 13 consecutive scoreless games.

In 1989, Guettterman had a remarkable season with a 2.45 ERA in 103 innings with just six homers allowed in his 70 games pitched that season. He had a 160 ERA+, which was his best of his career, and a 3.29 FIP, which was also his best of his career out of his 11 seasons (he only pitched in three games in the 1984 season before not pitching in 1985).

He was a Yankee in the 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 15 games of the 1992 season. He had a 3.73 ERA in his 233 games with the Yankees while pitching for Yankees teams that did not win very much. From 1988 through 1992, the Yankees finished below .500 in four of five seasons in missed the playoffs in each of those seasons. In the next 30 seasons after the 1992 season the Yankees have finished above .500 in every season and made the playoffs in 24 of those seasons.

It seemed like Ramirez would have a special and remarkable season in his second season and second MLB season overall back in 2008 after that scoreless game streak to begin the season but he would have a 3.90 ERA in 55 games that season, so he could not come close to having that success the rest of the season. He would then have a worse 5.73 ERA the next season with the Yankees before pitching his final MLB season in 2010 with the Athletics. However, he will always have his memorable 13-game scoreless streak to begin that 2008 season.

With a win on Wednesday against the Orioles, the Yankees would win the series and improve to just one game behind the Orioles for second place in the AL East, which is the best division in MLB since it is the only division with all five teams at .500 or above. The Yankees were able to win today on George Steinbrenner’s birthday.