Blue Jays prove severely overmatched even in tight loss to Yankees
TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays weren’t designed to beat the New York Yankees in a drawn-out bullpen duel.
Even the version of the Blue Jays the club imagined they’d be fielding prior to the season, would’ve struggled with that task. The competitive one with a Marcus Stroman-led rotation, Josh Donaldson-led lineup and Roberto Osuna-led bullpen. That now-fictional team was meant to have its starters go deep into games, out-hit its opponents, and cling to leads.
On Wednesday, the actual Blue Jays — the team with a punchless lineup experiencing a run of bullpen implosions — was given that mountain to climb and couldn’t quite scale it in a 2-0, 13th-inning loss.
There’s no doubt it was a valiant effort. Sam Gaviglio continued to astound with a scoreless seven innings, inducing soft grounder after soft grounder against a lineup known for launching balls obscene distances in the air. After he left, the bullpen put up five straight zeroes. Devon Travis, Russell Martin, and Teoscar Hernandez all produced memorable defensive highlights.
“Gaviglio was really, really good. The whole pitching half was until that last inning,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said in an effort to be positive post-game. “There was really good pitching on both sides and they got a big home run from a guy who does it a lot nowadays.”
This wasn’t a 50-50 proposition though. At the moment the game was lost the Blue Jays were on their sixth reliever, Joe Biagini — a guy who really hasn’t found his footing since returning to the bullpen. The Yankees, meanwhile, only used their dynamic quartet of Chad Green, Dellin Betances, David Robertson, and Aroldis Chapman.
In that deciding 13th inning, the Bronx Bombers’ slate went rookie phenom (Gleyber Torres), prototypical leadoff man (Brett Gardner), top pure power threat in the game (Aaron Judge), sweet swinging lefty (Greg Bird), reigning NL MVP (Giancarlo Stanton).
On the other side, the bottom of 13th featured Justin Smoak followed with three of the four hitters behind him living below the Mendoza line. The one exception, Kevin Pillar, has been in a severe slump since April.
The result is never pre-ordained in a baseball game, especially one of the extra-inning variety. Anything can happen in a single contest. That said, it never felt like the Blue Jays were going to win on Wednesday. Not when Gaviglio’s strong outing was being matched by Sonny Gray and not when it became a battle of the bullpens.
If you really wanted to point to an opportunity early in the game where the Blue Jays could have taken this one, the only candidate was the fifth inning when they got runners on the corners with none out.
Even then, Justin Smoak quickly made a serious base running blunder to get cut down at the plate by a country mile.
It’s unclear if this is a botched contact play or simply a bad read, but either way it didn’t come close to working. The former would have been a dubious call from the manager, the latter a mistake that a veteran can’t make in a big spot. Either way it was ugly.
The Blue Jays did manage to load the bases after Smoak got out, but a Devon Travis double play ended the threat.
On a day where the Blue Jays had 39 outs to play with, that’s about all they came up with.
“We hit some balls well but we didn’t get good results,” Pillar said of the day. “You’re going to face some good pitching, get shutout, not push runs across, get opportunities to drive in and not execute, but that’s just part of the game.”
It certainly was part of the game the Blue Jays played. The difference between them and the Yankees is that the Bronx Bombers simply can’t be held down forever. The Blue Jays, on the other hand, absolutely can.
One of the teams who met up at Rogers Centre on Wednesday is 40-18 and the other is 26-35. That’s not a fluke. Even Pillar readily admits that’s his club isn’t any better than its record.
“Our record is what our record is. We don’t deserve better. If you want to deserve better you go out and earn it.”
More Blue Jays coverage from Yahoo Canada Sports:
