Yesterday was such a nailbiter that even though tonight’s game was just about as close, the cadence of the evening felt very different — until it didn’t. Both teams reserved almost all their scoring for the middle innings, with an emphasis on a very stressful “almost.” The most charitable reading of the ninth inning would be “edge of your seat”, but it ended up thankfully breaking the Yankee way, and they won their second straight in this series, 5-4 your final.
Both teams had to be annoyed with missed
opportunities in the first. The Jays ended up with men on the corners and just one out before Will Warren was able to get some weak contact and get out of danger. For their own troubles, the Yankees had multiple men reach in the bottom half, but Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s strikeout on what should have been ball four had us scoreless after one.
Despite both working out of jams, or perhaps fittingly so, neither pitcher looked great, and both were perfectly happy to take their time on the mound. This was a slowwwww first five innings to get through, with both Warren and Dylan Cease happy to let the pitch clock tick all the way down multiple times an at-bat. Both ended up going five, with Warren having a couple quick innings in the second and third before running into more problems in the fourth, and Cease cruising until he ran into the hulking Ryan McMahon.
For Warren, it felt like the Jays had a really good gameplan for him, rather than there being something obviously deficient in his performance. His two fastballs, the four-seam and sinker, were both down about a half-mile per hour from his baseline, but to me I wonder how much of that was a focus on getting the ball in the zone more, as a check on his oft-discussed habits of nibbling.
Unfortunately, the Blue Jays still do make a lot of contact, and that’s how they got their runs in that fourth inning. Five of the first six players to come to the plate in that frame reached base, one via walk and the rest all hitting singles. It wasn’t a bludgeoning the way that Cease would experience in a few moments, more the old “death by a thousand cuts” kind of inning. Either way, it was 3-0 Blue Jays.
I had said in the gamethread that Dylan Cease is very good but perhaps playing a bit over his skis. With only one home run allowed so far this year, the righthander was due for some regression. While he did strike out six Yankees in the first three innings, yea did the Regression Monster arrive quickly:
A pair of walks, one ABS-enabled after Aaron Judge finally asked for a review, set up McMahon’s big fly to left field and just like that we were back to square one. With the game tied up, Will Warren needed to have himself a shutdown inning, and he did just that: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. popped up, Daulton Varsho grounded out, and Kazuma Okamoto was called out on strikes as the last man Warren faced.
The Yankees — specifically Ben Rice — would thank their starter for getting the bats back up quickly, and the Regression Monster roared again:
The Yankees certainly weren’t going to string a bunch of singles together against the kind of stuff Cease was slinging tonight, best to jump on a pair of fastballs in the zone and score that way. The Toronto righty entered play with a 1.80 FIP, and left with a 2.32. That’s what reverting to a baseline looks like all at once.
Perhaps the most refreshing bit of the game came after Warren left. The much-maligned and unfortunately quite well-worked Yankee bullpen combined to throw three shutout innings, getting the Yankees to the ninth with the lead. With neither David Bednar nor Fernando Cruz available, Camilo Doval was called upon to get the save, and here our troubles began.
Doval walked the first batter he faced, and gave up a hit to pinch-hitter Ernie Clement — who was playing with an active strep throat infection, a possible bioweapon — to set the table. Baby Vlad drove Andrés Giménez in with a sac fly, and with two outs, Doval couldn’t get to first in time to beat out Varsho, who stole second base some pitches later. With tensions high, Camilo got a medium groundball from Okamoto, Anthony Volpe made a nice easy throw from short, and the Yankees once again held on.
It was a bad weekend in Queens, and nobody is going to deny that. This week has started as well as it could, though, and while you can never count on sweeping a four-game series, the Yankees have put themselves in a great position to take three in this set. Cam Schlittler, who right now is the best pitcher in the American League, will get the ball and the start tomorrow night, with a 7:05pm Eastern first pitch.
