The New York Yankees last night had an embarrassing loss to the Blue Jays when they sorely need to win games. If the Yankees are going to have a chance at home-field advantage in the first round of the playoffs, they will have to win all four of the remaining games in the season. If they can achieve that, they won’t be able to play like they did last night. For a life long Yankee fan, this is a difficult recap to write.
Last night the Yankees had as many errors as they did hits. The Blue Jays scored off the Yankees in five out of eight innings, scored fourteen runs on 16 hits while remaining errorless. The Yankees scored one run on four hits, committing four errors. The Yankees didn’t pitch well, didn’t hit the ball, and just plain played sloppy baseball. If they play like they did last night, they won’t even last through the Wild Card Series. After the game, manager Aaron Boone said, we are a better team than this, we need to play better baseball. No kidding! I don’t think I have ever seen a baseball game that wasn’t a shutout, that a team had no RBIs. The only run the Yankees scored, was when a ball got away from Blue Jays catcher Danny Jensen.
It wasn’t long after Masahiro Tanaka took the mound that he showed he didn’t have it last night. Although, he didn’t get any favors from the home plate umpire, he clearly was not locating his pitches. Tanaka lasted only four innings, giving up three earned runs on eight hits. The usually dependable Luis Cessa gave up four runs in just 1.1 innings. Two of those runs were left on base by Tanaka. Tyler Lyons replaced Cessa for 1.2 innings, also giving up four earned runs. You know when a team has given up on the game, when they send out their reserve catcher to pitch. Erik Kratz pitched the eighth for the Yankees giving up the final run of the game for the 14-1 Yankee loss. Tanaka took the loss and the Blue Jays Robbie Ray recored the win.
The Blue Jays are still fighting for a playoff berth, they played with focus and purpose, while the Yankees appeared to have let their guard down, after securing their postseason berth, and winning Tuesday night’s game 12-1. The Yankees must clean up their game play. I have spoken to the sloppy play of Gleyber Torres and Gary Sanchez many times. Their combined four errors last night cost the New York Yankees. The four errors were the most errors the Yankees have commited in a single game since they had five errors on May 28, 2018.
DJ LeMahieu got two hits on the night, that’s half the hits of the whole Yankee team. The Blue Jays star of the game was Danny Jensen who got a home run off Masahiro Tanaka, and another one off Tyler Lyons. Jensen ended his night going 4 for 4. The Yankees blew their biggest opportunity in the game in the fifth inning, the Yankees had the bases loaded with Yankees with no outs, and left the bases loaded without scoring a run.
It was a night the New York Yankees are going to want to forget, as they face the Blue Jays again tonight. After tonight they will travel back to Yankee Stadium to face Derek Jeter’s Miami Marlins, for the last series of the regular season.