That was rough. Geez. The Blue Jays walked into Yankee Stadium and pushed the Yankees around in the series opener Friday night, winning the game 11-5. A thorough beatdown, to be sure. The Blue Jays are now 6-1 in the Bronx this year, outscoring the Yankees 36-14 in the seven games.
Putting The No In Severino
It was obvious early on Luis Severino didn’t have it. His command was atrocious. Pitches were up in the zone first and foremost, and when he missed, he missed out over the plate. The Blue Jays are way too good and won’t let a pitcher with bad command off the hook, no matter how hard he throws. Severino’s command problems led to a five-run first inning for Toronto, including a pair of two-run home runs.
The first homer was on a high fastball after Severino went from 0-2 to 3-2 against Josh Donaldson, who is so clearly going to win the MVP at this point. The second two-run homer was another bad fastball, that one belt high on the inner half to Justin Smoak. Justin Smoak! Between the two homers Edwin Encarnacion smashed a doubled off the wall and Troy Tulowitzki drove him in with a hard-hit ground ball single. Everything was hard hit. Everything.
Severino gave up five runs in the first inning after allowing five runs total in his previous 24.1 innings. He struggled through a scoreless second inning, didn’t retire any of the three batters he faced in the third inning, and was done. Brutal outing. Severino faced 16 batters and nine reached base. His strike total (41 strikes in 71 pitches, or 58%) doesn’t tell you how bad his location was. Everything was up and/or out over the plate. It was bad.
Young pitchers are going to have bumps in the road, that’s just the way it is, and unfortunately Severino had his first bad start as a big leaguer in the Yankees’ most important game (until tomorrow!) since 2012. That 2.04 ERA wasn’t going to last forever, but damn, did it have to disappear all at once? What awful timing for a dud.
Catch Up, Fall Behind
Every single time the Yankees managed to scratch out a run, the Blue Jays answered right back. Brendan Ryan doubled and Brett Gardner later drove him in with a sacrifice fly in the third inning to cut the deficit to 6-1. Then Edwin Encarnacion smashed a two-run home run into the second deck in left field (!) off Chris Martin to make it 8-1 in the fourth.
In the bottom of the fourth, Didi Gregorius laced a two-out single to right to score Carlos Beltran. Beltran and Chase Headley singled earlier in the inning, and Beltran aggressively took third on a deep fly ball. It looked like he would have been thrown out had Tulowitzki not cut it off. That made it 8-2. Russell Martin then hit a solo homer off Andrew Bailey in the top of the fifth to negate Didi’s run and make it 9-2.
Two innings later Gregorius came up with another big hit, this one a three-run dinger into the second deck in right field. LaTroy Hawkins threw a cement mixer slider and Gregorius missed none of it. Gone off the bat. Headley reached on an error and Greg Bird singled earlier in the inning to set up the three-run dinger. That made it 9-5 and suddenly we had a little bit of a game. Then Martin hit a two-run homer off Chasen Shreve in the next half-inning. 11-5 Blue Jays. Womp womp.
Severino was pretty bad Friday, but the bullpen was a disaster. Martin, Bailey, Shreve, Caleb Cotham, and Branden Pinder combined to allow five runs on ten hits in eight innings. At least they didn’t walk anyone. (Five strikeouts.) The Yankees do have a 13-man bullpen thanks to September call-ups, but I have no idea why Joe Girardi opted to use five different relievers the day before a doubleheader rather than use one long man for multiple innings. Weird.
Leftovers
Alex Rodriguez had his worse game of the season, going 0-for-4 with four ugly strikeouts. He saw 25 pitches, swung times 17, and missed eight times. Yikes. The Blue Jays buried him with breaking balls. With Mark Teixeira done for the season, the Yankees need A-Rod to be a force in the middle of the lineup, and he just hasn’t been that since the start of August.
Gardner has been slumping the last few weeks but he had a good game, going 2-for-3 with a walk and a hard-hit sacrifice fly. Gregorius had his two hits while Ellsbury, Beltran, Headley, Bird, and Ryan had one hit apiece. There was just the one walk. The Yankees had one base-runner after Didi’s sixth inning homer. That was Gardner’s leadoff single in the seventh. That’s it.
Shreve allowed three hits, including the two-run homer to Martin, in two-thirds of an inning. He’s really hit a wall of late. Twenty-nine of the last 70 batters he’s faced have reached base (.414 OBP), five on homers. Turns out asking your bullpen to get 12 outs a game day after day early in the season might wear out the middle relief in the second half.
And finally, a fan seated near the Blue Jays dugout fainted in the sixth inning and play had to be halted as emergency personnel helped him out. The Yankees said the guy is doing well and he was brought to the hospital as a precaution. Still scary though. Glad he’s okay.
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
You can find the box score and video highlights for the game here and here, respectively. Here are the updated standings and postseason odds for the season. The magic number to clinch a postseason spot remains 19. The Yankees are now 2.5 games behind the Blue Jays in the AL East, which is their largest deficit since April 17th (three games), the tenth game of the season. Anyway, make sure you check out our Bullpen Workload and Announcer Standings pages. Here’s the loss probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
Let’s play two! The Yankees and Blue Jays will play a single-admission doubleheader Saturday. Michael Pineda and Marco Estrada will start the first game at 1pm ET, then Ivan Nova and Marcus Stroman will start the second game roughly a half-hour after the first game ends. Head over to RAB Tickets if you want to catch the doubleheader live. One ticket, two games. Not a bad deal.
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