Blue Jays win in 10 innings

Blue Jays 2 Yankees 2 (10 innings)

What a great game to start the season

Extra innings on Opening Day!

In the top of the tenth:

Charlie had Jonathan Davis pinch-run as the runner on second. Randal Grichuk sliced one to right over the right fielder. Davis could have walked home. Randal to second. Danny Jansen showed why bunts are stupid and struck out trying to bunt on two strikes on a ball in the dirt. Dumb play. I HATE BUNTS. I HATE BUNTS WITH GUYS ON SECOND. I HATE BUNTING WITH TWO STRIKES. Marcus Semien and Cavan Biggio followed with strikeouts.

Julian Merryweather came in for the bottom of the tenth:

With Judge at second. Merryweather struck out the side. Hicks, Stanton, and Torres. That’s a wow. Just a fantastic job by Merryweather.

The good parts?

Hyun Jin Ryu looked terrific. He did seem to tire near the end of his 5.1 innings, but he was very sharp. The one blemish was the two-run homer from Gary Sanchez, but Ryu was terrific.

Our infield defense looked outstanding—night and day from last year. Biggio looks a much better third baseman than second. Marcus Semien showed a lot of range at second, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. did a very nice job at first (he did lose an out for his foot coming off first, to me, the replays showed him with his foot touching, but we never win challenges in New York).

They turned a very nice double play in the seventh. Bases loaded, David Phelps looking shaky but gets a ground ball third that went 5-4-3 with Vlad making an excellent pick out of the ground. Clutch defense there.

Vlad had a nice day at the plate, too, hit a rocket of a single his first time up, and took two walks. But got popped up in the ninth.

Teoscar hit a home run 437 feet, 110.3 MPH.

Tyler Chatwood came in in the sixth with 1 on and 1 out and looked sharp.

Rafael Dolis gave up a leadoff walk but got out of the inning with 2 strikeouts in his 45-minute inning. Sportnet loves him because they can run commercials between his pitches.

In the bottom of the ninth, Jordan Romano walked Gary Sanchez on five pitches. The Yankees put in Mike Tauchman, who promptly stole second (Romano doesn’t hold runners well) and then stole third, Danny Jansen had no chance on either). Another walk put runners on the corners. But Romano got DJ Lemahieu to ground to third, Biggio made a great throw home and Jansen made an equally nice tag. An Aaron Judge strikeout ended the inning.

Not so good:

As mentioned, Phelps loaded the bases on two hits and a walk but got out of the seventh with the double-play ball.

We had a couple of popups fall between the infield and outfield. I know Lourdes plays every deep but has to be able to cover some of that ground.

Our top three in the order, Semien, Biggio, and Bo Bichette, were 0 for 14 with 7 strikeouts. But it was Gerrit Cole. Rowdy Tellez had a tough day at the plate, with two infield flies and a soft fly to right.

We missed a chance in the top of the ninth. Teoscar Hernandez reached on an infield single off Darren O’Day, but Vlad, Lourdes, and Rowdy couldn’t move him off first. The shadows were pretty bad that inning and O’Day would be the worst to face in those shadows to be fair.

Jays of the Day: Merryweather (.217 WPA), Romano (.147), Dolis (.113), Grichuk (.301), Hernandez (.244)

Suckage: Semien (-.169), Biggio (-.136), Tellez (-.187) and Gurriel (-.106)

The next game is Saturday. It will have to be something amazing to be better than today’s.

We had 1,090 comments in the GameThread (actually more than that, but with the auto-ban, all of 13yearold’s comments were deleted). DangYouToHeck led us to victory. I also learned something. You can get an auto-ban for commenting “e” a couple of dozen times in a row. I’ve reinstated 13yearoldbaseballfanatic on our site, but he is banned system-wide. I’ll reach out to the tech guys.