BALTIMORE — Three months ago, Kyle Bradish made the Yankees look helpless. He carved through their lineup for six shutout innings and allowed a single hit in a lopsided Baltimore win.
On Thursday, the same right-hander stood on the same mound at Camden Yards. This time the outcome ran the other way, and the reversal said as much about the Yankees as any box score had in weeks.
New York had spent the second half searching for offense that rarely arrived. The lineup had turned quiet nights into a pattern, and the frustration had become the defining feature of the season’s stretch run.
Then, for one night, the bats answered the pitcher who had embarrassed them, and answered the doubts along with him.
The Yankees tagged Bradish for eight hits and five runs, three earned, over 5⅔ innings and beat the Orioles 6-1 to finish a three-game sweep. New York won its fourth straight and improved to 72-55. Cole handled the pitching, and the offense did something it had not managed in six weeks.
For the first time since July 9-10, the Yankees scored at least five runs in back-to-back games, and for the first time against the same opponent since June 16-17. For a club whose offense had become its clearest weakness, two loud nights in a row registered as a real break in the pattern.
One Baltimore error opens the door for the Yankees
The decisive inning came in the third and started without a swing that traveled far. Spencer Jones and Austin Wells opened with back-to-back singles. José Caballero followed with a grounder to Jackson Holliday at second.
Holliday’s throw to second was on target, but shortstop Gunnar Henderson dropped it. Jones scored, and nobody was out. Baltimore salvaged a double play on Trent Grisham’s grounder, which pushed Wells to third.
The Yankees kept pressing. Ben Rice lined a two-out single to score Wells. Heliot Ramos then drove a double off the right-field wall, missing a home run by a few feet, and Rice raced home from first to make it 3-0.
Yankees pile on as Cole and deadline bats deliver
The offense did not stop at three. Luis García Jr. opened the sixth with a solo home run, his 25th of the season and second as a Yankee, a 413-foot drive to the pull side. Jones followed two outs later with a 398-foot opposite-field shot, his sixth homer, which knocked Bradish out of the game.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. added an RBI triple in the eighth, scoring García from first. García and Jones each finished with three hits and two runs. The two struggling deadline additions, García and Ramos, delivered on the night the Yankees needed length from the bottom of the order.
Cole gave the Yankees six innings of one-run ball, striking out eight, his only blemish a Dylan Beavers home run in the fifth. He threw first-pitch strikes to 22 of the 23 batters he faced, and his eighth strikeout moved him past Roger Clemens for 12th on the franchise’s career list. Ryan Yarbrough followed with three perfect innings for the save, facing the minimum nine and resting a thin bullpen.
Boone welcomes a rare cushion for the Yankees
The manager had spent much of the summer explaining away quiet nights and pointing to quality contact that produced nothing. This time he had runs to talk about, and he framed the night around the comfort of a lead the Yankees rarely enjoy.
“It was good to get some cushion,” manager Aaron Boone said. “We got the lead and were able to add to it.”
Boone had repeatedly defended Ramos through a brutal start in pinstripes, calling it tough luck backed by the underlying contact data. On Thursday, the outfielder finally had a result to show for it. Ramos had come in at just 2-for-33 over his previous 10 games.
Boone also kept a door open for Spencer Jones, whose future at-bats are uncertain with Cody Bellinger nearing a return. The manager pointed to the rookie’s rare power to all fields.
The lefty swinger, Boone noted, has the ability to “leave any part of the ballpark.”
A strange streak Yankees still can’t shake: No first-inning runs
Here is the wrinkle a 6-1 rout could not erase. For all the offense that arrived after the third, the Yankees again failed to score in the first inning, another zero in a run stretching close to three weeks, the same stretch its offense went cold.
The pattern held Thursday. Nothing in the first, then six runs the rest of the way. New York has needed an inning or two to find its footing, and the trend has persisted even as the bats started to wake up around it.
It is the kind of oddity that does not decide games alone but shapes how they unfold. A lineup that cannot strike first hands the opponent early control and leans harder on its rotation to stay close until the offense stirs. Cole did exactly that before the bats caught up.
Yankees carry the surge home to face Toronto
The timing matters. The Yankees left Camden Yards four games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East and four games clear of Boston for the top spot in the American League wild-card race. They also carried their longest winning streak since before the All-Star break back to the Bronx.
Toronto arrives Friday to open a homestand, a week after the Blue Jays took two of three from the Yankees in Toronto and sharpened every question about this lineup. Cam Schlittler, 10-6 with a 2.19 ERA, is set to start for New York. The offense that Bradish silenced in May will try to prove that Thursday was the rule now, not the exception.
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