Jonathan Davis homers, Jays beat Yankees

Yankees 1 Blue Jays 2

There are few things better than beating the Yankees. A sweep would be so good.

This was a strange game. Our pitchers didn’t have a 3-up, 3-down inning until the seventh.

Taijuan Walker pitched the worse four shutout innings you are ever going to see.

• In the first, he got the first two batters and then walked the next three, but got out of it.
• In the second, he gave up a one-out double and walk, and got out of it.
• To lead off the third, he hit Aaron Hicks, who then stole second but would be caught stealing third, and then got three strikeouts.
• In the fourth, he got the first two batters again, then gave up a single and walk, before getting out of the inning. Walker wasn’t happy with the plate umpire when he left the field, I figured he would get tossed, but it didn’t matter, he came out of the game after four.

He could have gotten a bit more help from his defense, Danny Jansen dropped a popup, and Lourdes Gurriel had two fly balls go in and out of his glove.

Shun Yamaguchi wasn’t much better. He loaded the bases on two singles and a walk, before getting his first out of the fifth. But he got out of the inning with just the one run scoring. He just gave up a two-out single in the sixth. Yamaguchi gets the win, being the only pitcher to give up a run.

We did finally get 3-up, 3-down innings from A.J. Cole and Anthony Kay in the seventh and eighth. Rafael Dolis picked up the save (his 3rd), taking forever getting the 3-up 3-down ninth.

All our offense came off the bat of Jonathan Davis, who hit a two-run homer in his first at bat of the season. J.A. Happ was terrific, going 6.1 with just 4 hits, 2 walks and 10 strikeouts.

And we couldn’t get a hit off Yankee relievers Michael King and Zack Britton.

The top of our order went 0 for 12 with 2 walks. No Jay reached base twice.

Jays of the Day: Walker (.216 WPA, though that comes more on luck and bad Yankee hitting than from skill), Davis (.154), Kay (.126), Cole (.099) and Dolis (.099).

Suckage: Rowdy (-.103) was the only Jay to get the number. It is hard to build up a big negative when there is no one on base.

Rowdy came out of the game in the eight, he was limping after chasing a foul ball over one of the bullpen mounds. I hope he is ok.

We had 484 comments in the GameThread. I led us to a very narrow victory.