The Toronto Blue Jays travelled to New York last night to get stoned in the Bronx.
I can hear the stupid responses already.
–Don’t we have better shit right here in Tranna?
–Did they go to the Automat when they got the munchies? That must have been a trip all right!
–Won’t they fail their drug tests and get suspended?
Errg, that’s enough. I wish it was a laughing matter. Speaking as I was of consistently winning more series than they lose, the Jays made it a lot harder on themselves to win the current series against the Yankees that opened tonight at Yankee Stadium III by getting totally stifled by a bunch of Yankee pitchers you never heard of in a 1-0 win for the Yankees. Okay, you’ve heard of Dylan Betances, but he was the only New York hurler who didn’t stonewall the Jays’ hitters. If Yankee manager Joe Girardi had brought him in an inning earlier, maybe we’d have won tonight.
Meanwhile, the division race tightened a bit as Baltimore didn’t play and Boston won in Cleveland. This left the Orioles and the Blue Jays tied for first with Boston one game behind.
The Yankees spot-started a young fellow named Chad Green tonight, and he fulfilled his assignment in spades. The right-handed Green was drafted out of high school by Toronto in 2010 (can we pick ’em, or what?) but didn’t sign, opting for the University of Louisville instead. The Tigers drafted him in 2013, and traded him to the Yankees in December 2015 with Luis Cessa for Justin Wilson. The Yankees called him up and he made his major-league debut for them in mid-May.
I don’t know about the Blue Jays’ hitters, but I know that this is one observer who has to learn not to salivate when he sees an unknown with a minimal/mediocre record posted as the opposing starter. As in Chad Green (quick—look him up!), who went in to tonight’s start with a won-loss record of 1-2 and an ERA of 4.94.
So what happened when the Jays faced Green for six innings, recent acquisition Tyler Clippard, and Yankee reclamation project Adam Warren for one inning each? Well, lessee. Green faced two batters over the minimum, Troy Tulowitzki with a one-out single in the fifth, and Darren Ceciliani who doubled immediately following Tulo, but hit it too hard for Tulo to score from first. His line for the six innings was no runs, the two hits, no walks, and (ho-hum) eleven strikeouts. Clippart put the side out in order in the seventh with one strikeout. Warren did the same in the eighth, and we’ll leave Dylan Betances’ ninth inning off to the side for the moment.
With pitching like that, it was no wonder that the one run the Yankees scored off starter R.A. Dickey who went five, Joe Biagini, Brett Cecil, and Ryan Tepera looked like the last unclimbed mountain in the Himalayas from the vantage point of the Blue Jays’ dugout. This was a night when Dickey scuffled and sweated, as did both Biagini and Tepera, with only Cecil pitching with mastery against the Yanks. And yet only once, in the fatal fourth when rookie Aaron Judge drove home the only run of the game with his first extra-base hit that was not a home run, did the Jays’ pitchers actually concede a run. It was a gritty, exciting pitching performance in the midst of a pennant race that should have been rewarded with something other than a loss, but for the Yankees’ dominant mound presence.
Right from the beginning you knew it was going to be one of those nights for Dickey, one of those excruciating nights where you can see he’s struggling, and you know that the Sword of Damocles is dangling by a thread, and you don’t know how long it will hold. Jacoby Ellsbury led off with a double to the gap in right centre, and Chase Headley followed with a base on balls. The bleeding stopped there, but not until Dickey had thrown 25 pitches. In the second he walked Brian McCann and gave up a ground single to centre by impressive young catcher Gary Sanchez before settling in and retiring the next three hitters.
The knuckle-baller retired the side in order in the third, making for six straight outs, the only patch of calm in an otherwise rocky sea. The fourth inning was when he lifted his finger from the dike for a minute and let in the only run that mattered—the only run at all for that matter—in the game. He did retire Starlin Castro on a come-backer to start the inning for his seventh out in a row, but then he walked Brian McCann and Gary Sanchez, to bring the imposing rookie Aaron Judge, who had homered in his first two major-league games for the Yankees, to the plate. Having been fanned the first time he faced Dickey, he didn’t wait to be tied up by the unpredictable knuckler. He jumped on the first pitch he saw and drove it into the gap in right centre. McCann scored easily, but Melvin Upton caught the short hop off the wall on the fly and quickly fired it in to the cutoff man, holding Sanchez at third as Judge cruised into second with the first double of his career. With two runners still in scoring position and only one out, Dickey bore down, fanned Aaron Hicks and caught Jacoby Ellsbury looking to end the threat.
Finally pitching with the lead, Chad Green let down a little in the top of the fifth, and allowed his only base-runners. After Michael Saunders went down swinging, Tulo came to the plate, went to a 2-2 count, fouled off three pitches, and then steered a liner into left for the Jays’ first hit, and first runner, of the game. On a 1-1 pitch, Darrell Ceciliani doubled to left, sending Tulo to third. But, like Dickey, Green ended the threat by striking out Smoak and Upton. Unlike Dickey, though, that extra baserunner wasn’t there when he gave up the double, the shutout was preserved, and the visitors wouldn’t threaten again until the ninth inning.
In the bottom of the fifth, Dickey’s last, he danced around trouble one more time, just for the fun of it, before departing the scene. Chase Headley led off with a double, but Dickey then retired Didi Gregorius on a fly to centre, Mark Texeira on a soft liner to Tulo at short, and Starlin Castro on a grounder to short.
As I mentioned above, Joe Biagini kept the Yankees off the board in a roller coaster ride of a sixth in which he survived a bases-loaded, one-out jam, Cecil went clean in the seventh, and Ryan Tepera mimicked Biagini’s escape act in the eighth, once again denying the Yankees after they had loaded the bases with one out. The key moment in Biagini’s escape act was Jacoby Ellsbury’s sharp bouncer back to the pitcher with one out and the bases loaded. Biagini didn’t pick it cleanly, and had to pounce on it and make a strong throw to catcher Russell Martin to just nip Brian McCann for the forceout.
It was a night for Jays’ relievers to help themselves with strong fielding plays. In the eighth, with two on and nobody out, Aaron Hicks tried to bunt the runners up by dropping one down toward third. The play called for Tepera to take the ball and Josh Donaldson to stay home for a possible throw. But Tepera had to come a long way for the ball, and make a really quick decision and perfect throw to force Sanchez at third for the first out. The pressure eased somewhat when Tepera fanned Ellsbury, but ratcheted up again with a walk to Headley, before he induced Gregorius to line out (hard) to Ceciliani in left.
When the Yankees dismantled their triple-closer team at the trade deadline, they kept Dellin Betances, who became their closer by default. Tonight things worked out to their advantage, despite the depletion of their back-end ranks. Clippard and Warren had successfully bridged from the starter Green to the ninth, and here was Betances, ready to go for his fifth save against a team he has faced often. It’s elemental, the closer’s job, especially when the lead is only one run: get three outs before they score a run. Sometimes it’s a breeze, and sometimes not. Today it wasn’t a breeze, but Betances got the save.
Now, it’s not like Betances was all over the place, but the fact is he was a bit lucky. He ended up being only six inches or so away from a blown save. He started with the closer’s cardinal sin, walking the leadoff batter, in this case an even worse mistake, since it was the low-average Josh Thole that he walked. In his likely last appearance with the Jays, considering Zeke Carrera’s return to the active roster tomorrow, Junior Lake was sent in to run for Thole. After Devon Travis hit a foul popup to first, Josh Donaldson hit a ground single to centre, moving Lake to third with the tying run. Now, if we’re going to invoke the game-of -inches cliché about Edwin Encarnacion’s game-ending double play, we have to invoke it on Donaldson’s base hit as well. The ball he hit was a hard grounder that just skipped by the late reaction of Didi Gregorius at short. A few inches one way or the other, and the Yankees have an easy double play to end the game. But, it was a single to centre. When Edwin comes up with one out and runners on the corners, he hits one just as hard and just as tricky to third, but Headley manages to pick it and start an easy around-the-horn double play. As I said, inches from tying the game and keeping the inning alive for the Jays.
But something in the stars said that the Jays were not going to score against the Yankees on this night. And something in the stars was telling the truth. Tomorrow night it’s Marco Estrada against Michael Pineda, and we now have to win two straight to win the series. One at a time though, if you please. And let’s pull a few balls with base hits in them out of the ball bag tomorrow night, also if you please!
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