Blue Jays 4, Yankees 1, and this one was a lot closer than that final score wants you to believe -- right up until it wasn't.
Cam Schlittler was terrific for 5.1 innings at Rogers Centre on Saturday, matching zeros with Toronto's bullpen game and leaving with the score tied at 1. Then the Yankees pen happened. Brent Headrick and Tim Hill combined to allow three runs on six hits over the seventh and eighth, and the Yankees dropped their third straight, 1-4, falling into an 0-2 hole in this three-game set.
George Lombard Jr. put the Yankees up 1-0 in the second with an RBI single, and that lead held for exactly one inning. Toronto tied it in the third when Alejandro Kirk grounded a single up the middle that deflected off Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s glove and trickled into center -- the kind of play that doesn't show up as an error but changes a game anyway. Brett Bateman scored, it was 1-1, and it stayed that way for three more innings.
Charles McAdoo Says Hello (Twice)
The whole game turned in the bottom of the seventh. Ernie Clement led off with a single off Headrick, and two batters later Charles McAdoo ripped a double to center -- 107.4 mph off the bat, 406 feet -- that scored Clement and put Toronto ahead 2-1. It was the single biggest swing of the afternoon, worth nearly 20 points of win probability by itself.
Headrick got a sac bunt out and Paul Blackburn came in to strand the rest of that mess with an intentional walk to Kirk, a strikeout, and a lineout. Fine work. Didn't matter.
McAdoo wasn't finished. He came back up in the eighth against Tim Hill and lined a single to right that scored Andrés Giménez, his second RBI hit of the inning-plus. Two at-bats, two knocks, two runs driven in, and the Yankees never got the plate back.
The Bullpen Couldn't Hold a Tie
Give Schlittler his due. Seven strikeouts, three walks, four hits, one earned run over 5.1 -- he kept the Yankees in a road game against a lineup that put ten hits on the board (Toronto had 10 hits to New York's 4, and it still took until the seventh to crack it open). That's a start you win most nights.
Instead, Headrick (now 6-2) took the loss after his line went from "one bad double" to "the inning got away," and Hill was worse: 0.2 innings, three hits, a hit-by-pitch, two earned runs charged to him in the eighth. By the time Yerry De los Santos came in to intentionally walk Kirk for the second time in the game, the score was 4-1 and the outcome wasn't in doubt (Kirk finished 1-3 with two free passes -- Toronto clearly wasn't interested in letting him beat them with the bat).
Not Much Offense to Talk About
The Yankees' only run came in the second, when Lombard singled home Spencer Jones, who'd already stolen a base earlier in the frame. That was pretty much it for the night. New York managed just four hits total and stranded three runners, a quiet day at the plate against a bullpen game that had no business shutting anyone down for six innings. Ryan McMahon, Ben Rice, and Trent Grisham combined to go 0-for-10 with three strikeouts and were the three least productive bats in the lineup by the numbers -- not one big culprit, just a lineup that couldn't buy a hit when it mattered.
Louis Varland struck out the side in the ninth for his 28th save, which tells you everything about how the last two innings went.
Down 0-2, One Left
Cam Schlittler didn't deserve this loss, but wins aren't awarded on merit. The Yankees have lost three in a row now and need a win Sunday just to salvage a split of this series before they head home.
Jimmy writes the Bronx Pinstripes game recap after every Yankees game. Beat-reporter pacing, fan's heartbeat. He calls opposing players by last name and has no patience for dead-air innings.
