Ellsbury drove a 73 miles per hour knuckleball over the right-field short porch for a two-run homer, then added an RBI single to lead the Yankees over the Toronto Blue Jays 5-3 Monday and keep NY 3 1/2 games back in the AL wild-card race.
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Game Two of the series goes tomorrow with a 7:10pm first pitch.
Ellsbury’s.303 wOBA and.104 ISO this year are both below league average (.318 and.163 respectively). The knuckleballer is struggling with his consistency this season but is at least keeping the ball in the yard of late with one home run allowed in his last five starts.
While it certainly wasn’t Tanaka’s most spectacular performance to date, over the span of his last six contests, Tanaka has won five of six, only pitching less than six innings once, and that was in last week’s one-hour rain delay in Kansas City. As a starting pitcher, Cessa is 2-0 with a 3.00 ERA.
Toronto Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista (19) and Ezequiel Carrera (3) celebrate after scoring on Edwin Encarnacion’s two-run single during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the New York Yankees in New York, Monday, Sept. 5, 2016.
Kole Calhoun smacked his 16th home run and Albert Pujols had a two-run double, helping the Angels win for the eighth time in nine games overall and seventh time in their past nine road outings.
Morales hit a three-run drive off Jose Berrios (2-5) in the fifth for a 5-4 lead.
Encarnacion hit a two-out single to left with two out in the fifth but Bautista tried to get from first to third on the play and was thrown out by Gardner.
After closing out their series with NY on Wednesday, the Blue Jays return home to open a three-game series against Boston on Friday night. Maybe he isn’t a No. 1 starter per say, but on this Yankees staff, he’s the best they’ve got.
METS 5, REDS 0: Bartolo Colon (13-7) pitched six innings of five-hit ball and Matt Reynolds homered as the Mets won at Cincinnati for their sixth victory in eight games.
Toronto scored in the first inning for the fourth time in seven games on its trip and had runners at the corners and one out when Michael Saunders grounded to first and Bautista tried to score. Josh Donaldson has 147 hits with 108 runs, 34 homers and 92 RBI.
Scherzer (16-7) scattered seven hits and yielded two runs to win his fourth consecutive start.
Ryan Weber (1-1) lost his first start of the season for Atlanta.
Cessa has pitched six innings in each start, although he has allowed four of his nine home runs as a starting pitcher. Toronto posted a 7-4 victory in the series finale.
Miami’s Jake Esch (0-1) allowed three runs in five innings in his second major league start. It was just his second save since 2013.
Philadelphia’s Jerad Eickhoff (10-13) allowed the first two batters to score and then settled down to pitch six innings.
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The Yankees threw out four different pitchers in the seventh inning and the Blue Jays retaliated with three pinch-hitters.
