A Depressing Loss

Blue Jays 5 Yankees 6

Jordan Romano has been terrific. But tonight, he wasn’t. The bottom of the ninth started well, with a strikeout. Then back-to-back walks. Romano didn’t seem to want to go with the fastball, but he walked Jose Trevino and DJ LeMahieu. Then he got to 1-2 on Aaron Judge but floated in a slide, and Judge hit it to Manhatten. A totally depressing loss.

I don’t know what Romano was thinking. His fastball looked good.

So, let's get the stupidity out of the way before we join our regularly scheduled recap.

The Jays were up 3-0 going into the bottom of the sixth. Yusei Kikuchi was cruising along. But, he gave up a double (DJ LeMahieu) and a single (Aaron Judge), before getting his first out (Anthony Rizzo).

Then Yimi Garcia comes in. Giancarlo Stanton is the first batter he faces, and he pops a Yankee Stadium Special to right field (335 feet), a home run in exactly one park in the majors. Unfortunately, it is this one.

The next batter is Josh Donaldson, and the second pitch comes inside and gets him on the arm. Josh, surprisingly to me, doesn’t seem to bothered by it. The umpires, on the other hand, decided to confer, and then they tossed Yimi. Not surprisingly, this causes some upset. Pete Walker was tossed quickly (this may have come back to haunt us, I don’t know if Pete would have had the words to get Jordan through that ninth, but, well, whatever he would have said, it couldn’t have gone worse). Vlad escorted Yimi off the field after Garcia told the umpire why his inability to understand had something to do with who his mother choose to have sex with (or something like that).

David Phelps came in and finished out the inning.

In the top of the seventh, a pitch came up and in on Bo Bichette (again not on purpose), but the Jays were politely inquiring, from the bench, why Jonathan Loaisiga wasn’t tossed. That got Charlie thrown out of the game in way too much of a hurry. It did give Charlie a chance to say his piece.

The plate umpire had a very bad night calling balls and strikes. And the Jays bench had been letting him hear about it. It seemed no Yankees’ pitch could be far enough off the plate for him to call it a ball. So, the Jays were not happy with him, even before the stupid tossing of Garcia.

Anyway, back to the recap.

The Jays scored:

• 1 run in the first: George Springer started the game off right with a home run, 385 feet to left. Bo followed with a single. But Vlad, Teoscar and Lourdes all struck out.
• 2 runs in the second: Alejandro Kirk singled, and Matt Chapman walked. That was followed by what was called a home run on the field but changed to a double on review by Santiago Espinal. Thankfully the umpires decided that both runners would have scored (the ball was almost caught by Aaron Hick, hit the top of the wall, and bounced back onto the field). After that, Tyler Heineman bunted Espinal to third. I’m very much not a fan of bunting someone up from second to third because instead of three chances to score, you now only have two. Anyway, Springer struck out (looking), Bo walked, and Vlad ground out.
• And we got two more runs in the eighth. With the game tied, Vlad led off with a walk. Teoscar struck out. Then Lourdes Gurriel doubled to left. I didn’t think Vlad could score, but Aaron Hicks has a crappy arm, and Vlad was easily safe. Gutsy send by Rivera. Kirk followed with a fly ball to medium center. Again I didn’t think we could score, and again we did. Really bad throw from Judge in CF.

We should have scored more runs (a cut and paste from most of the recaps this year).

Jays of the Day: Gurriel (.319 WPA), Kikuchi (.151), Espinal (.109), and Springer (.106).

Suckage: Romano (-.922), Garcia (-.361, hardly fair since the home run he gave up would have been a fly out anywhere else), and Hernandez (-.111, 0 for 4, 3 strikeouts, working to get his timing back).

A really irritating loss. I’m not a fan of managers and coaches getting thrown from a game. I agree with Cito Gaston’s line that he was more valuable on the bench than in the clubhouse during a game. Montoyo really didn’t have any choice in the matter, but Walker maybe could keep his cool a bit better. He was upset about the strike zone before being livid about Garcia being tossed.

Tomorrow we have an early game, a 12:30 Eastern start. Jose Berrios against Jameson Taillon.

There damn well better be.