Marcus Stroman has a great start, Jays beat Yankees

Yankees 0  Blue Jays 4

What a great start from Marcus Stroman. 7 innings, just 5 hits (4 singles and a double) allowed, 1 walk with 5 strikeouts. He was only really in trouble once, and that was in the 7th inning. He gave up a 1-out walk and a 2-out single. Then, Dustin Ackley hit a hard line drive to center but Kevin Pillar was there for the catch. I really can't say enough for how great Stroman was, so I'll stop there.

In the game thread folks were wondering why not Cecil to face the lefty. Of course, if they brought Cecil in, Ackley would have been pinch hit and you would have had a lefty killer in there.

Cecil did pitch a great 8th. Roberto Osuna pitched a non-save 9th and gave up a lead off double but, after that, he got:

• helped out by an amazing play by Ryan Goins.
• a strikeout
• a gentle fly out to center.

Nice job even if there wasn't a save. Nice to see him

On offense, we didn't do much. We didn't score until the 6th (wanting to keep the suspense for as long as possible). In the 6th, Russell Martin took a 2-out walk, back-to-back singles from Ryan Goins and Pillar scored him.

They broke the game hope in the 7th, Russell Martin hit his 21st home run of the season, a 3-run shot. Another big 2-out hit. For a guy that seems to have been slumping most of the year, 21 home runs is pretty good.

We had troubles with Ivan Nova, which surprised me. He pitched a good game, and the few times we hit him hard, it was right into a glove. We did take a bunch of pitches against him, he threw 110 pitches in 5.2 innings, but we couldn't seem to get the hit at the right moment against him. He did a good job of changing speeds and getting the curve across when we weren't looking for it.

We had 8 hit and 4 walks. Josh Donaldson had 3 of the hits. Nice to see his bat get going. Ben Revere, Jose Bautista and Justin Smoak had 0 fors. Smoak had a tough day, going 0 for 4 with 4 strikeouts. But, let's not start up the Colabello/Smoak stuff in this thread.

Jays of the Day are Stroman (.449 WPA), Pillar (.159, plus a couple of good catches), Martin (.137) and Donaldson (.096).

Revere (-.161, he hit the ball hard a couple of times) and Smoak (-.161) get the suckage number.

Jays take 2 of 3 from the Yankees, in a series the Yankees desperately needed, if they were going to catch us up. The Jays are up 3.5 games, with 10 to go. Life is good.

The Jays had a nice tribute to Yogi Berra before the game. Very classy of them.

We had 1750 comments in the GameThreads. Belisarius led us to victory. Great job.