Through four games, the New York Yankees are off to a good start thanks to their power hitting. The Philadelphia Phillies, on the other hand, are winless in four games, unable to get clutch hits and prevent opponents from scoring often.
New York looks to maintain its early power surge on Tuesday night when it hosts the winless Phillies in the middle game of a three-game series.
The Yankees have hit multiple homers in their first four games of a season for the first time since 2011.
After Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge and Kyle Higashioka connected on Sunday in a 6-0 blanking of the visiting San Francisco Giants, Gleyber Torres hit a solo homer and Anthony Rizzo hit a two-run blast in a five-run fifth Monday as New York cruised to an 8-1 rout of the Phillies in the series opener.
Rizzo said, “Good at-bats, aggressive but also selective and we’ve been putting pressure on pitchers. The game we lost, we had a good ninth inning, so it’s been fun up and down the lineup.”
New York heads into Tuesday hitting .260, and besides the hits, the Yankees have drawn 19 walks after getting nine on Monday.
Torres is among the Yankees off to an impressive start. He is 4-for-12 after reaching base a career-high five times Monday while collecting his 100th career homer, an RBI infield single and three walks.
“I feel like they’re kind of feeding off each other right now,” New York manager Aaron Boone said of his players. “Just the quality of at-bat, up and down (the lineup), and that was the case again (Monday).”
Philadelphia is off to its worst start since 2016. The Phillies last began 0-5 in 1934, when they dropped their first seven games.
While the Phillies are batting .287, they have scored only 12 runs. Alec Bohm had three hits on Monday and Edmundo Sosa added an RBI single, but the Phillies were 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position and are 9-for-39 (.231) with runners in scoring position so far.
“You don’t want to start 0-4, that’s for sure, but if we lost four in a row in July, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “So it looks a little worse when you start the season (0-4), but we don’t want to keep doing this.”
Domingo German, who was 1-1 with an 8.71 ERA in four spring training starts covering 10 1/3 innings, makes his season debut for the Yankees. German last pitched on March 17, when he was rocked for seven runs and nine hits in 2 2/3 innings against the Detroit Tigers.
Last season, German was 2-5 with a 3.61 ERA when 14 of his 15 outings were as a starting pitcher. His last regular-season start was on Oct. 5 in Texas, when he allowed four runs in 4 1/3 innings.
German is 0-1 with a 8.68 ERA in three career appearances (two starts) against Philadelphia. His last outing against the Phillies was July 20, 2021, in New York, when he allowed two runs in four innings.
Philadelphia’s Matt Strahm will make his 26th career start and his first start where he is not an opener since July 2, 2019, for San Diego, when he allowed seven runs and 11 hits in five innings against San Francisco. As a starter in his career, Strahm is 4-10 with a 5.08 ERA.
He made a relief appearance on Opening Day, throwing a scoreless inning during the Phillies’ 11-7 loss to the Texas Rangers.
The left-hander is 0-2 with a 2.45 ERA in 10 career appearances, one start, against the Yankees. In a May 27, 2019, start at New York, he struck out 10 and allowed three runs in six innings.
–Field Level Media
