New York Yankees vs. Baltimore Orioles: Clarke Schmidt vs. Kyle Gibson

We’ve got some Independence Day baseball in the Bronx this afternoon, with the Yankees looking to take the first two of their four-game home set with the Orioles, who now sit three up on the Bombers for second place in the AL East. The O’s appear to have finally hit a bit of a slump, losing five of their last six and eight of twelve after playing at a 100-win pace for most of the spring. Still, at 49-34, they’ll likely to enter the All-Star Break with their most successful first half since 1997, when they won 98 games before falling in a famously above-board and controversy-free ALCS.

Clarke Schmidt takes the hill for the Yankees having quietly found some stability in recent weeks after a terrible start to the year, running a 2.55 ERA over his last eight starts since a disastrous seven-run blowup against the Rays in May. He’s only averaging 5.1 innings per start in that span, and the Yankees have lost six of those eight games, but he’s still done a good job of keeping them in it into the middle-late innings before turning it over to a lockdown bullpen. Nonetheless, he still might be pitching for a job this month, as while Carlos Rodón will grab the vacant fifth starter spot, someone between Schmidt and Domingo Germán will have to go if all starters are healthy when Nestor Cortes returns.

On the other side, Kyle Gibson is looking to right his ship after a pair of brutal starts against Seattle and Cincinnati that saw him give up 11 earned runs over just 7.2 total innings. For the most part, though, the kitchen-sink righty has played a valuable innings-eating role for an inexperienced Baltimore pitching staff, leading the team with 17 starts and 96.2 IP. Those two ugly starts aside, he’s been a solid No. 3 in their rotation behind Tyler Wells and Kyle Bradish, as the Yankees saw first-hand when he shut them out for seven innings at Yankee Stadium on May 25th.

The Yankees are giving us a classic day-game-after-a-night-game lineup, plugging Jake Bauers to the cleanup spot and bumping the surging Anthony Volpe up a few places. Interestingly, Isiah Kiner-Falefa gets the nod at third base against Josh Donaldson, whose 22 plate appearances against Gibson are more than any other current Yankee, in which time he’s been a .375 hitter with three homers and six walks to just five strikeouts.

How to watch

Location: Yankee Stadium — Bronx, NY

First pitch: 1:05 pm ET (now 1:40pm ET)

TV broadcast: YES – NYY / MASN - BAL

Radio broadcast: WFAN 660/101.9, WADO 1280

Online stream: MLB.tv

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Update

First pitch was pushed back but we should have baseball today.