Yankees 7 Blue Jays 2
Clearly we shouldn't have been arguing about Carlos Villanueva's trade value, in the game thread before the start of the game, because he seemed determined to prove me right in thinking that he doesn't have all that much trade value. He fought his way through 6 innings, giving up 5 runs, off 8 hits and a walk. He struck out 6. He seemed to be up in the zone a lot today.
For the record, in 10 starts he, now, has an ERA of 4.05. Quite good. As a reliever he has a 1.48 ERA. I'm not saying that I think he's bad or anything like that, I just don't think that a guy, who we picked up for free a few months ago, can build much trade value in 10 starts.
Our bullpen gave up a couple of runs too. Luis Perez gave up 1 in his 1.1 innings. Jason Frasor also gave up 1 in his inning. Octavio Dotel looked good, getting 2 outs in the 8th.
Our offense was pretty much nonexistent. The little bit of offense we got was from Edwin Encarncion and Travis Snider. In the 2nd, Edwin doubled and Travis singled him home. Then in the 4th Edwin walked, Travis hit a ball to the wall but it bounced over, costing him a RBI. Aaron Hill hit a sac fly to score the run. And that was it.
Yunel Escobar had our other hit and a walk. He also got robbed on a lousy call at first on a ground ball that Jorge Posada, for whatever reason, stood across the first base line to wait for the throw. Yunel managed to miss Posada and touch the bag, but the umpire didn't see it. I figured, at very least, he'd be called safe because of the interference. Oh well.
We managed 4 hits and 2 walks in the 6 innings against Phil Hughes, who I don't think pitched as good as we made him look. Then the Yankee bullpen threw 3 perfect innings.
Jay of the Day is Travis (.141 WPA). Carlos has the Suckage number (-.241), though Lind came close, with an 0 for 4 on his birthday. Thames, Patterson, Hill, Arencibia (3 strikeouts) and Davis all had 0 fors.
It's too bad that, if we were going to split the 4 game series, we didn't win the last two games. Then, at least, we'd feel better about it. The good news is we won't be hearing the Yankees whine we are stealing signs.
After an off-day tomorrow, we have a 3 game set against the Mariners. We have a tough match-up Tuesday with Michael Pineda (8-6, 3.03) starting for the M's. Brett Cecil (2-4, 5.66) gets the start for us. He has had 2 good starts in a row, so we can hope it continues. And Jose Bautista should be back, with any luck at all.