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The New York Yankees and Washington Nationals’ games on Wednesday were canceled due to the weather in Washington, so two games, one the completion of the suspended game tied at 3-3 and the final game of the two game series. The games will be made up on June 18.

On to Kansas City for the Yankees—looking ahead at Friday’s pitching matchup, CC Sabathia (2-0, 2.23 ERA) will go up against RHP Jakob Junis (4-3, 3.53 ERA) for the Royals.







Junis made his Major League debut in April of ’17 and Sean Thornton of Royals Review wrote that over the last two months of the 2017 season, Junis was the Royals’ most reliable pitcher, “becoming the ‘go to’ guy when the Royals needed to end a losing streak.”

The Royals lost Wednesday night to Tampa Bay, which means that with Junis on the mound after the loss, Junis and the club will be a tough matchup for the Bombers on Friday night.

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According to Brooks Baseball, Junis’ repertoire of pitches includes a slider (83 mph), four seam fastball (92 mph), sinker (91 mph), change up (86 mph) and a rare curve ball (80 mph).

Thornton describes what has made the second year pitcher successful:

“Junis’ ability to mix up his pitches has become a focal point of his arsenal and if he continues to do so he should be able to maintain his recent success. While his slider will get most of the glory and is the pitch with the most movement, it isn’t quite as lethal without a nice array of other pitches to set it up.”

Yankee hitters will be looking to lay off that lethal slider from the young left-hander and will look to hit for the fences as Junis has given up 11 home runs in 51 innings of work for a 1.94 HR/9 ratio. When the Yankees met up with Junis in ’17, he gave up home runs to Greg Bird and Aaron Judge.

Sabathia will look to rebound from a four inning, nine hit, four run outing against the Boston Red Sox on May 10 that raised his ERA from 1.39 to 2.23.

The Yankees roll into Kansas City winners of 19 of their last 22 games and beat the Royals 5-2 on the year in 2017.