Jays Lose to Yankees

Yankees 4 Blue Jays 0

This was just an irritating game. Sometimes Evil wins.

Yusie Kikuchi wasn’t good, but...the home run he gave up was a Yankee Stadium special. It wouldn’t have been a home run in any other park in the league, but Aaron Hicks dropped it just into the short porch. And a misplay between Matt Chapman and Bo Bichette put a runner on that shouldn’t have been, and then that runner scored on a wild pickoff throw to first by catcher Tyler Heineman. Kikuchi wasn’t sharp, but he should have only given up one run.

Kikuchi went 3.1, and allowed 5 hits, 3 runs, 2 earned, 2 walks and 2 strikeouts. Once again, we had a strike zone that seemed to change from pitch to pitch. Between that and some bad defense, it is hard to decide how much blame should be put on his shoulders.

And our offense was anemic. We had just 5 hits on the day. Other than George Springer, the bats were dead cold.

We had a couple of chances. Springer and Bichette reached in the eighth, bringing Vlad up as the tying run, but a groundout ended things.

Springer started the game with a double and stole third, but we couldn’t score him.

Vlad, Gurriel, Kirk, Espinal, and Collins/Heineman all had 0 fors.

Our bullpen did a pretty good job:

• Dave Phelps: Got the last two outs of the fourth.
• Julian Merryweather: Pitched a clean fifth.
• Tim Mayza did the same for the sixth.
• Anthony Kay pitched a nice seventh, but gave up a run in the eighth.

There was a weird play in the first inning. Josh Donaldson walked, and Anthony Rizzo doubled to right. Teoscar Hernandez had all sorts of trouble picking the ball up off the ground. Donaldson had stopped at third, but then noticed Teoscar’s problems and headed home. Hernandez threw him out by 15 feet. One of those rules of baseball is ‘if you stop at third, don’t start again”.

No Jays of the Day in that one.

Suckage: Kikuchi (-.181, like I said, some bad luck), and Vlad (-.122, 0 for 4 with a strikeout, didn’t hit anything hard).

Jays are now 3-2. Tomorrow Jose Berrios tries to make up for his opening day troubles. Gerrit Cole, who had his own opening day issues, starts for the Evil guys.