Jays Lose a Frustrating Game

Yankees 4 Blue Jays 0

One of those games that turned on a bad inning. Actually, it turned on a couple of bad calls.

Fourth inning 0-0. With one out, 3-1 pitch to Anthony Rizzo. Rizzo pretends to bunt at it but pulls back the bat. The ball is in the strike zone but is called a ball. Rizzo walks. Later a pitch to Isiah Kiner-Falefa, low and away, he swings, but the first base umpire calls it no swing. He ends up singling. Bases loaded until Aaron Hicks doubles them all home. Later in the inning, Jose Trevino was hit by a pitch that he swung at, but it was called no swing and a hit batter. That got Charlie ejected.

Anyway, it was suddenly 3-0. The Yankees would get one more in the sixth. That inning started with a fly ball to the wall in center, Ramiel Tapia appeared to make the catch, but the ball bounced out of his glove, hit the wall and went back in his glove. Something we couldn’t see until they showed a view from the left-field line.

But.....

We have to score.

We had 5 hits on the day. Ramiel Tapia had 2 of them, and our only extra-base hit.

George Springer took 3 walks. The only Jay to have a base on balls.

And 12 times, the Jays struck out.

The pitching was tough, but we need to score against tough pitching.

Manoah went 5.1, giving up 6 hits, 4 earned, 1 walk and 5 strikeouts.

Manoah is still a young pitcher, and he might have handled the adversity better. And the Jays were constantly changing the signals from the catcher. Alek doesn’t like the pitch communicator, but perhaps he could rethink that now. Anytime there was a runner on second the signs changed, which isn’t unusual. Teams have been doing that for years.

David Phelps (1.1), Tim Mayza (0.1) and Trent Thornton (2.0) kept the Yankees off the scoreboard the rest of the way, so we could have, with some offense, gotten back into the game.

Jay of the Game: Tapia (.109).

Suckage: Manoah (-.166), Vlad (-.109), Espinal (.113), Chapman (-.098) and Kirk (-.089). The four hitters in that group went a combined 1 for 15.

Tomorrow Kikuchi (2-3, 4.80) goes against Severino (2-3, 2.80). It is a 1:00 Eastern start. Maybe we could try scoring?