The Yankees are on another level once again. They sweep the Rays out of New York and defeat them on yet another walk-off 2-1. Anthony Rizzo was the MVP as he drove in not only the walk-off homer but the other RBI as well earlier in the game.
A late scratch to Luis Severino as the starter did not affect the Yankees pitching negatively at all. They had a weird but great combination of pitchers in the game as they went with Clarke Schmidt as the opener to Ryan Weber to Ron Marinaccio to Michael King. Weber was just called up before the game and he delivered 3.2 innings of solid work for the Yanks. Clarke Schmidt opened the game for the first 3 innings as well. When you can get a great 6.2 innings from these two pitchers, then that is a really good sign for this ball club. It seems like basically any pitcher this season they've had to call on has stepped up when they needed them to. Ryan Weber and Clarke Schmidt prove this once again.
The Yanks had a mediocre offense all series as they combined for only 8 runs, yet they still found a way to sweep the series! The pitching once again shutdown the opposing offense as the Rays combined to score only 4 runs the entire series as well.
The Yanks entire offense was through Anthony Rizzo as he drove in the game-tying run and the the walk-off run in the bottom of the 9th. Rizzo has been a very up and down player this season I believe and he only needs a couple of good swings to get himself going again. Hopefully this game can help Rizzo get his offensive groove back.
It seems like there is always a new theme for every Yankees win and the theme of this game was definitely the incorporation of the next man up. Luis Severino was scratched right before the game, but there was no panic as Clarke Schmidt and the rest of the Yankee bullpen filled in for him and pitched to absolute domination. Schmidt was the next man up and he was great.
Since Clarke Schmidt made his major league debut I have seen him make such a big leap and become a more and more dominant pitcher especially this year. When he was first called up in 2020, he had a couple of shaky outings and then was sent down back to the minors and then came up last year and improved. Now in 2022, this is definitely the best he has played in his career. It seems that since Matt Blake has taken over as Yankee pitching coach, he has made every single Yankee pitcher better and he has certainly done that with Clarke Schmidt as well.
This was a great start to this tough 9 game stretch against the Rays and Blue Jays as they sweep the Rays and now head to Toronto with a smile on their faces. A mini 6 game road trip coming up for the best team in baseball as they are now 31 games over .500. They continue to impress me each and every game they play.
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