Orioles shut out and unable to secure series win (updated)

The curveball that Dean Kremer fed Aaron Judge in the first inning today made the Yankees slugger look bad. Or at least human.

Judge took his usual mighty cut, caught only air, and walked back to the dugout with a rare strikeout in the series.

Kremer tried the same pitch in the third inning with a runner on base, and Judge destroyed it with the same ferocity.

The bender almost broke a seat in the section behind the left field bleachers, a 456-foot shot to increase a lead that the Yankees held throughout the steamy afternoon in a 6-0 win over the Orioles before an announced crowd of 25,623 at Camden Yards.

All-Star Nestor Cortes Jr. tossed six scoreless innings, and his former team moved below .500 again at 47-48. The Orioles still haven’t won two series against the Yankees in the same season since 2017.

Today’s shutout was the seventh against the Orioles, who welcome the Rays into town for a four-game series beginning Monday.

Judge has hit nine home runs in his last 12 games against the Orioles, 35 in his career and 19 in Baltimore. The left field wall that taunted him earlier this season has been silenced.

Advantage wall no more.

"I don't think anybody should keep pitching him. The guy is unbelievable," said catcher Robinson Chirinos.

"He's hitting good pitches, he's hitting mistakes. Normally when a guy's hot, he's hitting doubles and singles. He's hitting the ball out of the ballpark and it's crazy. He's a good hitter. What can I say."

The plan was to go down and away with the curveball, but it went up and in. Manager Brandon Hyde had first base open but wasn't ordering an intentional walk in the third inning.

"We've just got to execute better pitches there," Hyde said. "You've got to live on the edge or off or down. If you walk him, you walk him. But a young pitcher made a mistake in a bad spot there."

Kremer stranded a runner on first base in the fifth inning by striking out Judge on a cutter with the count full and the Orioles behind 3-0 – his 76^th pitch of the game and a chance at a quality start still in play.

It ended two batters into the sixth, with Kremer at 83 pitches. He hit Anthony Rizzo and retired Gleyber Torres on a fly ball.

Keegan Akin let an inherited runner score on Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s two-out single, and Jose Trevino doubled for a 5-0 lead. Kremer was charged with four runs and five hits in 5 1/3 innings, and he struck out six batters.

"I just thought he made a couple bad pitches," Hyde said.

Kremer retired eight of the first nine batters before DJ LeMahieu doubled in the third to score Trevino, who singled with one out. Judge stepped to the plate, ran the count to 1-1 on a pair of cutters and watched the next pitch travel 456 feet with an exit velocity of 111.1 mph for his 37^th home run of the season.

Yankees fans resumed their chants of “MVP, MVP.” The counterpoints are disappearing like the baseballs that he hits.

"His stuff was good," Chirinos said of Kremer. "If you take away that cutter he threw to LeMahieu down and in for a double, and the curveball to Judge, he threw the ball really well."

Kremer, who wasn't available to the media after the game, fell into trouble again in the fourth after Torres’ leadoff walk. Aaron Hicks singled into right field with one out and was thrown out at third base on Jorge Mateo’s relay.

Adley Rutschman reached with one out in the second inning on a play originally ruled an error on Torres that occurred 383 feet from home plate. The Yankees went with four outfielders, Torres moved to left, and Rutschman’s fly ball to the warning track popped out of his glove.

A scoring change later in the game gave Rutschman his 18^th double in 49 games. Still resembled an error, but Rutschman was getting two bases either way.

Ramón Urías stayed hot with a single, giving him hits in 12 of his last 14 games and a .426 average in that span, but runners were stranded on the corners after Cortes struck out the next two batters.

Cortes faced the Orioles on April 17 at Camden Yards and struck out a career-high 12 batters in five scoreless innings. He fanned seven today and didn’t walk a batter.

"A lot of stuff he does, hides the ball really well, he hits the corners," Chirinos said. "You look at the game, he was throwing up and in, backdoor, he was changing speeds to guys. He definitely figured it out over there."

"He's got multiple pitches he can throw for strikes," Hyde said. "He throws to both sides of the plate, gives you some different arm angles. He's got great command of all of his pitches, and he doesn't make many middle misses.

"We had one opportunity to score there early, and besides that, we didn't have many baserunners on him. It's a tough at-bat, and we didn't swing the bat very well against him."

Rico Garcia entered in the eighth inning for his first appearance in exactly two weeks, and he allowed a run with two outs in the ninth when Hicks’ ground ball was deflected by the reliever and scooted under Mateo’s glove. Garcia was optioned after the game. 

Mateo saved a run by racing into center field, avoiding a collision with a sliding Cedric Mullins and latching onto Kiner-Falefa's fly ball after a momentary bobble.

Trevino singled in the eighth for his first career four-hit game. Clarke Schmidt earned his first career save with three scoreless innings.

"We got into every game with the mentality of trying to win the game, go into every series trying to win the series," Hyde said. "It's the middle of July, it was really hot out there today, and we didn't play our best baseball. We played really well the past two nights. That's a first-place club with the best record in baseball.

"I thought we played them tough today. Just wasn't our day."