Series Recap: Jays drop a series for the first time in 2018
By Cam Lewis
6 years agoIt was bound to happen eventually. The Jays rolled into New York high off of a dominant series sweep against the Royals, but their bats got shut down by some solid Yankee pitching. While the Yankees haven’t really shown it much this year, they’re a good team, and losing three of four in New York doesn’t mean the season is over.
What happened
On Thursday, Aaron Sanchez gave the Jays a chance to win, but the bats couldn’t come through. CC Sabathia was knocked out of the game early, but the Jays were 2-for-14 with runners in scoring position and only managed one run in a bases-loaded-with-nobody out situation in the eighth. 4-3 Yankees.
On Friday, Marco Estrada got knocked around a little bit but it didn’t matter because the bats came through. This will be known as the Lourdes Gurriel game as the rookie drove in three runs in his Major League debut. 8-5 Blue Jays/
On Saturday, it was a close game until the sixth inning where Marcus Stroman and John Axford for seven runs. The lineup didn’t get much going either, as the Jays were only able to muster four hits the entire game. 8-1 Yankees.
On Sunday, the lineup was stagnant yet again, as Luis Severino, like he did on Opening Day, dominated the Jays’ hitters. Jaime Garcia was decent, but you aren’t going to win if you don’t score runs. 5-1 Yankees.
Thoughts…
- It’s easier to score runs off of the Kansas City Royals than it is to score runs off of the New York Yankees. It isn’t all too concerning that the Jays were shut down by Luis Severino on Sunday, but the showing against Sabathia, Montgomery, and the Yankees’ bullpen throughout the series wasn’t ideal. The Jays left a lot of runners on base and easily could have had a much better fortune in this series if they were able to come up with the big hit at the right time. I think this is where you realize the team actually misses Josh Donaldson, which we didn’t really appreciate as they were kicking the shit out of Kansas City, Baltimore, and other bad teams before this weekend.
- Losing to the Yankees is obviously a tough pill to swallow, but the Jays can still make up for these difficult games by beating the bad teams in the American League. Richard wrote last week about how the Dodgers and Astros last year weren’t all too impressive against good teams and they made up a lot of their ground spanking good teams. I’m not saying that’s ideal, or anything, but it isn’t the end of the world that Toronto went into new York and lost three of four games. Ultimately, going 13-8 through 21 games is very good, no matter how they get there. If you keep doing that, you’ll hit 100 wins.
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