Gleyber does something not seen in 60 years
Yankees 2B has 4 multi-HR games, 10 dingers vs. Orioles
The Yankees have brought the lumber against the Orioles this season, and Gleyber Torres is leading the charge.
Torres went 2-for-5 with a pair of solo home runs at Camden Yards on Wednesday night, as part of a 13-hit, five-homer barrage in a 7-5 Yankees victory. It was just the latest chapter in an eye-popping power surge that has played out as the two American League East clubs have met 11 times early this season.
The Yankees improved to 9-2 in those matchups with Wednesday’s victory, and the long ball has been a huge part of that success. The Bronx Bombers have 34 homers in those 11 games -- despite getting just two from injured sluggers Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. Torres has picked up the slack by going a mind-blowing 20-for-43 against Baltimore, with three doubles and 10 homers.
And keep in mind, the damage is far from done. The Yankees and Orioles still have eight more games scheduled throughout the rest of 2019, including this afternoon’s series finale in Baltimore.
With that in mind, here are all of the hard-hitting facts you need to know about the power display Torres and the Yankees have put on against in O’s this season.
• Wednesday marked the fourth time this season that Torres homered twice in a game, with all four coming against the Orioles. That makes him only the fourth player in Major League history to have four multi-homer games against the same team in the same season -- and the first in more than 60 years. He joins Roy Sievers of the 1955 Washington Senators (against the Kansas City A’s), Gus Zernial of the ‘51 Philadelphia A’s (against the St. Louis Browns, who later became the Orioles), and Ralph Kiner of the ‘47 Pirates (against the Boston Braves).
• Torres is the 16th player to have at least 10 home runs in a season against the Orioles/Browns franchise, but just the third since it moved to Baltimore for the 1954 season, joining teammate Judge (11 for the 2017 Yankees), and J.D. Martinez (10 for the '18 Red Sox). The only players to go deep 12 times in a season against the franchise are Zernial in 1951, the Tigers’ Hank Greenberg in '46 and the Yankees’ Lou Gehrig in '31. All three did it against the Browns.
• Per STATS, Torres is the fifth Yankee to tally double-digit homers against a single opponent in one season since the American League expanded in 1961. He follows some legendary names: Roger Maris (13 vs. White Sox, 1961), Mickey Mantle (11 vs. Senators, '61), Graig Nettles (10 vs. Indians, '74) and Judge -- who knocked 11 against the Orioles and 10 against the Blue Jays during his monster 2017 campaign.
• Torres already has seven homers at Camden Yards in 2019, putting him right on the doorstep of history. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the all-time record for most homers by a visiting player at one ballpark in one season is Harry Heilmann’s 10 against the A’s at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park in 1922.
But the record for existing ballparks is eight, done four times, by Babe Ruth (Fenway Park, 1927), Mike Schmidt (Wrigley Field, '80), Sammy Sosa (Minute Maid Park, 2001) and, most recently, Mookie Betts at … Camden Yards in '16. Betts didn’t hit his eighth homer at Camden until Sept. 19 of that year.
• Torres is the first player in MLB history to have 10 of his first 12 homers in a season come against the same team, according to STATS. Per Elias, Heilmann also owns the record for the highest percentage of a player’s homers coming against one team in one season (11 of 21, 52.4 percent), with a minimum of 20 dingers -- so that’s the target for Torres to shoot for.
• Torres is sharing the wealth: His 10 homers against Baltimore have come off eight different Orioles pitchers. Three of David Hess’ Major League-high 17 homers allowed have come off Torres’ bat.
• Torres’ slugging percentage of 1.233 in 11 games against the Orioles this year is the highest of any player who has ever appeared in a minimum of 10 games against Baltimore in a single season. Behind him on the list are Albert Belle (1.073, 10 games in 1994), teammate Judge (1.049, 19 games in 2017), Ted Williams (1.049, 22 games in 1947) and Gehrig (1.046, 22 games in '31).
• Torres and Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez -- who crushed his 15th big fly of the season Wednesday -- are just the 10th set of teammates (any club) to each hit at least nine dingers against the same team in one season, per YES Network researcher James Smyth. If Sanchez knocks just one more dinger against Baltimore in 2019, he and Torres would join the legendary Gehrig and Ruth (1927, vs. Red Sox) as the second pair of teammates to collect double-digit homers against one opponent in a season.
• Prior to 2019, the record for single-season homers by any player against any opponent before June was eight, according to STATS. Torres and Sanchez now have both broken that mark against the Orioles this season.
• Wednesday marked the Yankees’ sixth consecutive game at Camden Yards in which they hit at least three home runs, setting a record for the longest streak by any team at any ballpark in MLB history, according to STATS.
• With five homers Wednesday night, the Yankees have tallied 34 big flies against the Orioles this season. The all-time record for most home runs vs. the Orioles in a single season already belongs to the Yankees, who hit 46 against Baltimore in 2017. With eight games remaining between the two clubs this season, that mark is in jeopardy.
• Torres’ performance Wednesday gave the Yankees 10 individual multi-homer games this season, which ranks second in MLB to the Twins’ 11. A whopping eight of those 10 have come against the Orioles.
Those eight individual multi-homer efforts are the most in a single season against the Orioles in franchise history. The previous record of seven was held by none other than the Yankees, who did it in 2017.
• Seven of New York’s eight individual multi-homer games have come at Camden Yards -- and that’s already the second-most for any team at a road park in one season, per STATS. If a Yankees hitter has one more multi-homer game in Baltimore, the Bronx Bombers will tie the Giants’ record of eight in 1958 against the Dodgers -- both clubs’ first season in California -- when San Francisco took advantage of the notoriously short fences at the LA Coliseum.