That was as bad as it gets. The red hot Blue Jays walked into Yankee Stadium and swept the Yankees in a three-game series for the first time since 2003, shutting them out for the second straight day Sunday. The final score was 2-0. Yuck.
Rock Bottom
The good news is the offense has nowhere to go but up, right? They scored one run in the three games — on a cheap Yankee Stadium home run, no less — and did not score a run in their final 28 innings of the series. They were held to three singles for the second straight day Sunday afternoon. Carlos Beltran, Chase Headley, and Didi Gregorius had the hits, none of which were particularly well-struck. Their two hardest hit balls went for outs: Mark Teixeira lined into the shift and Gregorius lined a ball at third baseman Josh Donaldson.
The Yankees were able to bunch a few base-runners together Sunday and did have some chances to score, but they couldn’t capitalize. Marco Estrada walked two batters (Teixeira and Brian McCann) with one out in the fourth, then Beltran banged into a tailor made 4-6-3 double play. Beltran walked and Headley singled with one out in the seventh, but Didi lined the ball at Donaldson and Stephen Drew struck out. It was Drew’s 325th plate appearance of the season. He’ll turn it around any day now. You watch. *farts*
Offensive slumps happen, I’ve watched enough baseball to know that, but this one is particularly ugly and ill-timed. The Blue Jays have a better roster than the Yankees at this point, at least on paper, and they outplayed the Yankees in every phase of the game this series. Offense, pitching, defense, the whole nine. They even outmanaged ’em. Brutal series. There’s no sugarcoating it. Dreadful. The only positive is that no one got injured.
Two Taters
Masahiro Tanaka’s scary home run problem continued Sunday afternoon, though he limited it to two solo homers this game, both by pretty great hitters. I mean, Donaldson and Jose Bautista are going to mash taters. What can you do? Aside from the two home runs — the 15th and 16th homers Tanaka has allowed in his last eleven starts — Tanaka was pretty excellent, allowing just one other hit in six innings. He struck out five and walked zero.
Tanaka’s afternoon was pretty short. Joe Girardi opted to pull him after only 80 pitches because he was starting on regular rest for the first time since coming off the DL back in early-June. He’d made every other start since then with at least one extra day of rest. The Yankees have gone to great lengths to try to keep Tanaka healthy this season, and it appears limiting him to 80 pitches when on regular rest is part of the plan. I have no opinion on this. It is what it is. *shrugs shoulders*
Scoreless Relief
For the first time all season, Adam Warren came out of the bullpen to pitch back-to-back days. He promptly loaded the bases with no outs. Bautista almost took his head off with a line drive, Dioner Navarro walked after taking some borderline pitches, then Chris Colabello took a pitch to the hand. Not ideal! Girardi pulled Warren and went to Justin Wilson, which was both his best option — like it or not, Dellin Betances is not coming in with no outs in the seventh — and risky because Wilson is prone to losing the strike zone.
Staying true to form, Wilson pumped fastball after fastball after fastball. The velocities of his eleven pitches: 96, 96, 98, 96, 96, 96, 95, 94, 96, 96, 97. Wilson struck out Justin Smoak and Cliff Pennington, then got Kevin Pillar to fly out weakly to shallow right field to strand all three runners. That was huge. Uuuuge. The offense didn’t take advantage and get back in the game because they’re jerks, but man, that was some effort by Wilson. He was the unsung hero in a game with no hero.
Wilson started the eighth, got Ben Revere to ground out, then Girardi doubled down on Branden Pinder against the top of the lineup following Friday’s loss. Pinder walked Troy Tulowitzki then allowed a single to Donaldson, so things were heading for trouble. Pinder rebounded to strike out Bautista before Chasen Shreve coaxed an inning-ending ground out from Navarro. Shreve tossed a scoreless ninth as well. The pitching staff held the highest scoring team in baseball to ten runs in three games. And the Yankees were swept. I hate everything.
Leftovers
The top five hitters in the lineup went a combined 0-for-17 and hit two balls out of the infield. Jacoby Ellsbury continued his slump with an 0-for-4 and is now in a 0-for-12 rut since the game-winning homer Thursday. He’s been a non-factor since coming off the DL and is down to a 96 wRC+ on the season. Brian McCann, who has quietly done little at the plate the last five weeks, went 0-for-3.
The Yankees had not been shut out in two consecutive games for a record 2,666 games before this weekend. Bad news: they’re not going to score tomorrow either. (It’s an off-day.) Their last set of back-to-back shutouts were in May 1999. The last time before that was in 1996. At least those seasons had happy endings, right?
And finally, the idiot fan who threw Bautista’s home run ball back hit Brett Gardner in the head with the throw. Brett was fine and I’m sure the fan didn’t mean it, but still. Throwing the ball back is dumb. Give it to a kid if you don’t want it.
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Here are the box score and video highlights for Sunday afternoon’s game. Here are the updated standings and postseason odds for the season. The Yankees went from having a 69.1% chance of winning the AL East prior to Friday’s game to a 53.5% chance following Sunday’s game. Here are the Bullpen Workload and Announcer Standings pages, and here’s the loss probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
This Yankees have an off-day Monday before opening a 16 games in 16 days stretch in Cleveland on Tuesday night. Luis Severino will be making his second career big league start in the series opener against the Indians. Carlos Carrasco will be his opposite number. Runs are optional.
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