BALTIMORE — A battle for first place in the AL East on a steamy and tense Friday night at Camden Yards turned into fireworks, ignited by an errant 97 mph sinker in the rain.
Clay Holmes’ 0-2 pitch in the bottom of the ninth drilled Heston Kjerstad in the helmet, which eventually set off Orioles manager Brandon Hyde toward someone in the Yankees dugout and the benches cleared for pushing and shoving without any punches being thrown.
The end result was a crucial 4-1 Yankees win on a night when Gerrit Cole pitched like an ace to lift his struggling team back within one game of the Orioles for first place in the AL East.
But on the way there, emotions boiled over in a heated scene that could have lingering effects as the teams play the final two games of the series before the All-Star break.
“Obviously an emotional moment,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Two teams playing for a lot. Glad it didn’t escalate too much.”
Once Kjerstad got to his feet, Holmes said he tried to tell him that the pitch was not intentional and he hoped he was OK.
The situation escalated from there.
“I saw Hyde mouthing some stuff,” said Holmes, who was unsure what Hyde actually said. “I think some people didn’t like that and things got heated.”
Still, Hyde was starting to walk off the field with Kjerstad (who had to be pinch-run for) before he turned back and charged toward the Yankees dugout, with catcher Austin Wells intercepting him to hold him back.
But he could not stop the benches from clearing.
“Just walking back and I hear stuff from [their] dugout, so I reacted the way I did,” Hyde said. “Saw they were pointing at me. … [I was] reacting to their coaches. … An emotional time, my guy just got hit in the ear. See their dugout waving at me and yelling at me.”
Said Wells: “To be in the middle of it, just trying to limit any unnecessary repercussions.”
Boone and Hyde were jawing at each other at one point in the scrum, though by the time it settled down, Hyde was the only one to get ejected.
Boone and all of his players who spoke to reporters after the game said they understood where Hyde was coming from, even though the pitch from Holmes was not intentional.
On a humid night already, it had started raining in the top of the ninth. And Holmes had Kjerstad in an 0-2 count, two outs away from securing a much-needed win for the Yankees (57-39), who had lost 18 of their last 25 games before Friday.
“Two good teams going at it,” said Cole, who ended up right in the middle of the action. “Both clubs pitch inside. Dude, it’s so wet out there tonight. Clay threw the next pitch, first pitch to Ryan [O’Hearn], Ryan almost loses his bat out of his hands and wipes his hands on his pants to grip the bat. Anybody out there knows it was tough to grip the baseball tonight. With that said, the guy got hit in the head, so it’s understandable that’s Brandon’s pissed. He’s defending his players.”
Aaron Judge, who crushed his 33rd home run of the season earlier in the game, called it a “scary moment” seeing Kjerstad get beaned.
“Anytime somebody gets hit in the head like that, you never like seeing that no matter if it’s your team, their team,” Judge said. “I think there was just some chirping back and forth. We’ve gotten quite a few of their guys hit by pitches, they’ve gotten us. It’s kind of boiled over there.
“Any time the benches clear, all the boys come together. But it’s baseball.”
Perhaps it will be a galvanizing moment for the Yankees, who desperately need any kind of momentum to turn around the skid that has plagued them for the last four weeks.
On Saturday, they will try to win back-to-back games for the first time in a month, as long as the extracurriculars don’t get in the way of the fight for the division.
“I hope not,” Boone said. “I don’t think so. We’re playing for too much to get caught up in that. We gotta play well, we gotta win ball games. Same for them.”
— Additional reporting by Dan Martin
