This was just Sabathia’s sixth scoreless outing of the season, and the Yankees were only able to muster three hits in the game.
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The Yankees’ season got off to a awful start, hitting rock bottom at 9-17. They’re into it. And that last at-bat’s always nice. Since Aug. 23, Sabathia’s ERA is a tidy 2.57, his WHIP a stingy 1.167.
Tune in tomorrow to see if the Yankees can find a way to break their losing streak and their consecutive shutout streak!
Saturday was another of those.
Josh Donaldson hit a two-run homer and Edwin Encarnacion got his 124th RBI, tied with Boston’s David Ortiz for the AL lead, as the Blue Jays won their sixth straight home game over NY. The Yankees fall to four games behind the Tigers.
When he arrived at the ballpark, Hernandez turned to his locker mate, Franklin Gutierrez, and declared, “We’re going to win this game”.
They had David Price, they had a lineup that didn’t stop, they had a boost from Marcus Stroman’s return and they whatever karma you get from going 21-6 in August and 18-9 in September.
After Stroman was consoled by manager John Gibbons in the dugout when he was pulled, Jason Grilli entered the game in the eighth inning, got the first two batters he faced, and then provided the first tense moment of the game for the 47,828 in attendance when he gave up a two-out triple to Yankees third baseman Ronald Torreyes.
“You have to win today”, he said. Manager Joe Girardi will be looking for a repeat performance of his September 7 season debut against Toronto where he kept the Blue Jays off the board in five shut out innings. “But to get back to the normal, what a routine is like on a five-day (schedule) is going to be big for all of us going down the stretch”.
More bad news. The Yankees were eliminated from AL East contention in Friday’s loss.
The loss for the Yankees, their eighth in their last 10 games, pretty much derails their slender playoff hopes, dropping their record to 79-75 on the season.
In two starts this season against Toronto, he is 0-1 with a 1.64 ERA.
Severino washed out as a sophomore starter only to remake himself as a reliever after being recalled at the deadline. Still, the Blue Jays slugger has one of baseball’s most unsafe bats.
Stroman tossed his first scoreless outing nearly a year to the day he beat the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, going seven innings while allowing just one hit for the second time in his career – the first since July 24, 2014, against the Boston Red Sox.
Girardi, for one, said he was not surprised that Sabathia had rounded into a reliable member of a sometimes unreliable rotation. By my count, at least nine other pitchers (eight relievers, one starter) in the AL have produced Cy Young worthy regular seasons. “Yeah, it’s cool to take part in as pitching matchup like that but I feel at the end of the day, I don’t really take the perception into a game of I’m facing King Felix”.
First Grilli got Aaron Hicks to ground out to third and followed that up by fooling Brian McCann on a called third strike.
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Over on the Blue Jays’ side, we’ll be seeing lefty Francisco Liriano take the mound Friday. Didi Gregorius flied to center to end the inning. After this four games series against the Yankees, the Jays will host Baltimore in a crucial three game series, before they head to Boston for their final three game series of the season ending on October 2nd at Fenway Park. While I don’t get a vote for the AL Cy Young Award (it would be hard for a Canadian to vote against Happ) I believe that it will most likely come down to Happ, Kluber or Porcello (though a case could also be made for Britton, who, in a past era, might also be considered for AL MVP). Saturday’s blast was also the 16th of his career that has given his team the lead from the eighth inning on.
