TORONTO — So that’s three games in a row, now, with a big hit. One to tie a game, one to break a game open and, on Saturday, a three-run home run to win it. Three consecutive games bearing Jose Bautista’s imprimatur.
“He’s the guy,” Marcus Stroman said Saturday, after Bautista’s 20th home run and his first of the season against the New Yankees delivered a 3-0 Toronto Blue Jays win. “Been the guy for a long time.”
Bautista, who doubled and reached on a fielder’s choice, used Kevin Pillar’s bat to drill the homer and extended his on-base streak to 31 games. Fourteen of Bautista’s homers have been go-ahead shots.
Stroman tossed his first scoreless outing almost a year to the day he beat the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, going seven innings while allowing just one hit for the second time in his career – the first since July 24, 2014, against the Boston Red Sox.
In the process, the Blue Jays stepped on another of the Yankees’ few remaining embers of post-season hope. With two games left in this four-game series the Yankees have lost seven consecutive games at Rogers Centre. They’ve been shut out in their last three games, the first time that’s happened since 1975.
Before the game, the discussion on the other side of the field revolved around Yankees manager Joe Girardi’s angry exit from Friday’s post-game news conference, after he tired of being pressed about his bullpen use.
Girardi went with what amounted to his second tier of relievers despite being down 3-0 en route to a 9-0 loss. Saturday, he was still peeved.
“I took a calculated risk,” he said. “To insinuate I quit is ridiculous.”
The loss on Friday, coupled with the Boston Red Sox’s win, eliminated the Yankees from the American League East Division title race and their wild-card hopes are on fumes after a wonderful run cobbled together by youngsters and holdover veterans who were not dumped at the trade deadline. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, are taking aim at home-field advantage for the wild-card game.
Someone asked Gibbons before Saturday’s tilt if the wild-card game even counted as a post-season game.
“Yeah,” Gibbons responded. “It means you got a chance, even though it’s not what you aim for.”
Stroman threw just 97 pitches, striking out five and walking three. Aaron Hicks’ one-out single in the second inning – which was erased by a double play into the defensive shift – was the only hit managed by the Yankees until Ronald Torreyes’ two-out triple off Jason Grilli in the eighth.
Girardi elected to use right-handed Billy Butler as a pinch-hitter at that point, even though he had experienced switch-hitters Chase Headley and Mark Teixeira on the bench. Headley’s back was sore, Girardi said before the game, and Teixeira was bothered by neck spasms. So he went with Butler – despite putting Teixeira at first in the bottom of the eighth.
Grilli carved up Butler with a 93-mph fastball, saying later he wasn’t thinking about facing Butler instead of a left-handed hitter, stating that when it comes to the “chess game of baseball,” the idea is to “play the chess game the way you want to play it.”
Checkmate.
“Sometimes,” he intoned, “it takes every inning to win a ball game.”
The Blue Jays have yet to record a complete game – one of only four major league teams to do so – and are on pace to become the first team in MLB history to lead the league in starter’s innings pitched without the aid of a complete game. It felt as if Stroman was poised to deliver – indeed, he pressed his case with manager John Gibbons – but in the end Gibbons stuck with his formula and went to Grilli (6-3) and then Roberto Osuna, who picked up his ninth save in as many career opportunities against the Yankees, despite giving up a one-out single to Brett Gardner.
For all his post-game talk, Girardi essentially ran up the white flag on 2016 on Friday night. Bautista delivered a two-run double in that game after Edwin Encarnacion was intentionally walked in front of him and slugged his homer Saturday after Yankees reliever Tyler Clippard (1-2) again pitched around Encarnacion.
Bautista, who slammed a mammoth homer on Wednesday in Seattle in a game that went 12 innings, spent the post-game fouling off various narratives. Redemption and revenge all fell by the wayside. Hell, he wouldn’t even entertain the suggestion that he’s heating up after a so-so season. But he did nibble when asked about Pillar’s bat.
“Just shaking it up from time to time,” said Bautista, who finished the day at .233 – the highest his batting average has been since it was .234 on June 13, which includes a long stint on the 15-day disabled list. “I used it once in Seattle and a couple of times (Friday.) It just feels good.”
It’s the second example of things being “shaken up” this weekend. Friday, Josh Donaldson started sporting LeBron Soldier 10 cleats (for which King James gave him a shout out on Twitter) as well as going with the knee-high socks look. He’s been on base five times through these first two games and homered. And, hey, here’s something else, new: the Blue Jays have tamed the beast that is Yankees rookie Gary Sanchez, holding him to a mere double and single on Friday and hanging the sixth 0-for-4 on him in 48 career games.
Pitching with shadows creeping across the front of the pitcher’s mound because of the 4:07 p.m. ET start, Stroman struck out Sanchez twice, catching him looking the second time. Sanchez, 11-for-22 with five homers against the Blue Jays coming into the game, flied out to left to end the ninth.
“I was aggressive,” Stroman said. “I went at him with fastballs. I don’t like to go away from the hitter’s strengths … I like to go to my strengths.”