Great Start from Manoah, Jays Beat Yankees

Sith 0 Blue Jays 3

It is always good when the rebels find the exhaust port.

I don’t think anyone will argue if I suggest that Alek Manoah just had our best start of the young season. 6 innings, just one hit, 4 walks and 7 strikeouts. Three of the walks came in the third inning, helped along by a particularly shaky Paul Emmel behind the plate. Emmel had both teams yelling at him at various times. I’ll be curious to see the “Umpire Scorecards” card on this game tomorrow.

Alek does seem to save his best starts for the Bronx.

And we had some terrific defense, especially this double play started by master ballerinas Santiago Espinal and Bo Bichette. My sister says that Bo is the man, and said I could quote her, so I did. Now she’ll want payin’.

Bo had another great throw earlier in the game (he also threw wide of first twice on fairly easy ground balls that Vlad made nice plays on. Teoscar Hernandez also made a nice sliding catch just before the double play above.

Offensively, we did enough.

George Springer went 3 for 5, hit his second home run of the season, a two-run shot in the third. And he had an RBI double in the seventh, bringing Santiago Espinal home. Espinal and Hernandez also had 3 hits each. And Lourdes Gurriel had our other hit.

That means the other five batters had 0 for. Bo was 0 for 5 with 3 strikeouts. Chapman 0 for 4 with 3 strikeouts. And we were less than impressed with Zack Collins, going 0 for 3 with 2 strikeouts.

Our bullpen did the job tonight:

• Trevor Richards had troubles, giving up a hit and a walk while getting 1 out.
• Adam Cimber got the double shown above, getting Richards out of trouble and then pitched the eighth, pitching around a hit batter.
• And Jordan Romano gave up a leadoff single, got a double play, another single, and got a strikeout, picking up his third save of the year.

Jays of the Day: Manoah (.353 WPA), Springer (.297), and Cimber (.159).

No Suckage Jays. Bo had the low mark, -.090, but he made a couple of nice plays in the field, so I can’t complain too much.

Good Triumphs over Evil. The Jays are now 3-1. Tomorrow we get to see Yusei Kikuchi in a regular-season game for the Jays. Nestor Cortes starts for the Evil Empire.