Evil Empire feasts on call-ups, Blue Jays fall 11-5

Yankees 11 Blue Jays 5

This is a little late going up, since yours truly elected to watch the Area Code Games home run derby (won by Nolan Gorman over Triston Casas, both big names for next year's draft) on the theory that no one would in much of a rush to discuss this game anyway. I'm still more inclined to forget it happened than to write about it, but alas.

NIck Tepesch was....well, about as expected. He sort of kept the Blue Jays in the game early, giving three home runs to Gary Sanchez, Todd Frazier andi Did Gregorius. But they were all of the solo variety, which limited the damage. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, but it couldn't hold forever. After working around a couple baserunners in the 4th, he walked Aaron Judge with one out in the 5th before getting tagged by Gregorius for another double.

In came fellow Buffalo call-up Leonel Campos who struck out Sanchez to just need any type of out to strand the runners. It wasn't to be. Frazier whacked a double to score both runners, and then Jacoby Ellsbury did the same in turn to cash him.

Meanwhile, the Jays had Tanaka on the ropes, but didn't really put him away. Steve Pearce walked and Kevin Pillar doubled leading off the 2nd, but they only got on in Nori Aoki's RBI groundout. They loaded the bases in the 3rd, but only got one on a Steve Pearce groundout. That narrowed things to 3-2 until the Yankees blew it back out to 6-2 off Campos.

Jose Bautista took Tanaka yard leading off the 5th, and Donaldson walked, but Chad Green came in and quelled the nascent rally by striking out the side. They got him in the 6th, via a Ryan Goins RBI double to drive in Aoki who singled leading off. Donaldson later drove him in with a single off Tommy Kahnle to make it tantalizingly close at 6-5. It was as close as it would get.

Aaron Loup pitched a clean 6th, and Dominic Leone a clean 7th, but gave up a single to Frazier leading off the 8th. J.P. Howell came in for the L/L matchup and got Ellsbury swinging, and then the ball went to Taylor Cole for his major league debut. Unfortunately, it didn't go the way it does in Disney movies.

Cole got ahead of Garrett Cooper, but couldn't finish him off, giving up a hard double. Ronald Torreyes drove in both runners with a hard single up the middle. A walk was followed by another single, though Aoki threw the runner out at home and then Cole rebounded to strike out Aaron Judge with a nasty slider.

But Cole couldn't carry the momentum over to the 9th, and things unravelled: single, single, HBP, RBI groundout, RBI single and it was 11-5. Danny Barnes got the last two outs, though I'm sure the Jays would have preferred to not use him.

Source: FanGraphs

Jays of the Day: Donaldson (+.210 WPA). Nice to have the MVP Josh back

Suckage: Tepesch (-0.208), Cole (-0.199), Campos (-0.133), Barney (-0.133). Bautista (-0.095) probably deserves one as well, but he hit a home run so we'll leave it. Shoutout to Smoak (-0.070) for the four strikeouts.

Tomorrow, the Jays will look to take the series with Marco Estrada facing off against Sonny Gray. Same time, same place, if you have the stomach.