Max Fried wasn’t at his best.
There was some sloppy play in the infield that didn’t help the lefty.
And one of the best hitters in the game went down with an injury.
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Try it freeNone of it stopped the freight train that is the Yankees on Sunday in The Bronx, as they beat the Orioles 11-3 to win for the 13th time in 15 games.
They’ve also won eight straight over Baltimore and look to complete a four-game sweep at home Monday.
“It just feels like guys are in a good place and we have a lot of ways to beat you,” Aaron Boone said. “I like the fact guys are doing the little things. To win in different ways is nice.”
While it’s true they have added aspects to their overall game — improved speed and defense — it’s also true they still thrive on mashing the opposition.
They hit three homers for a second straight game and turned what had been a tight game into a laugher.
Home runs by Ben Rice — who exited with a hand injury — and Aaron Judge gave the Yankees an early lead before they scratched together a run in the sixth to go ahead for good, thanks to solid bullpen work and a seven-run eighth inning.
Facing Trey Gibson in his MLB debut, Rice opened the scoring with his 12th homer of the season with one out in the bottom of the first.
Fried, who hadn’t allowed a run in his previous two outings — covering 14 innings — gave up three runs in 5 ¹/₃ innings and threw a season-high 107 pitches.
The lefty also left a pair of runners on base when he exited in the top of the sixth, with Fernando Cruz getting out of it unscathed.
Fried gave up a run in the third that tied the game and was saved from more damage by a running catch at the wall by Judge to rob Taylor Ward of a run-scoring extra-base hit.
And after Judge’s two-run homer, his 13th of the year, in the third, Fried found trouble again in the fourth.
Pete Alonso opened with a double.
After a walk to Tyler O’Neill, an infield hit by Coby Mayo loaded the bases on a play Ryan McMahon might have made.
With the bases loaded, a grounder up the middle by Leody Taveras hit a grounder up the middle — stopped by Jazz Chisholm Jr. — for an infield single a run.
Baltimore then tied it on a Jeremiah Jackson double play.
But a leadoff double by Jasson Domínguez sparked the Yankees in the sixth with a leadoff double from the right side of the plate.
He moved to third on an Austin Wells groundout, and with the infield in, McMahon scored Domínguez on an infield single.
Left-hander Brent Headrick got Adley Rutschman to ground out to end the top of the seventh, leaving Samuel Basallo at third as the potential tying run.
The Yankees put an end to the drama in the eighth, as Domínguez hit a two-run homer — his first of the season — and Paul Goldschmidt, who replaced Rice at first, drove in a pair with a single.
Since dropping five straight to the A’s and Tampa Bay and then splitting a four-game series with the Angels, the Yankees have been nearly unstoppable.
Their message at the beginning of the season was that they wanted to close out series sweeps more effectively than they did last season and avoid the lulls that have interrupted their success in recent seasons.
“It’s something we’ve been trying to do a better job of: Being consistent,” Fried said. “We want to play the caliber of baseball we know we can. We know these games in this part of the season are just as important as they are late, and we want to stay on top of it.”