Jays drop rough game to Yankees
Dugouts cleared twice and New York’s manager and three players were ejected from the game
TORONTO — Lifeless for the first three games of the series, the New York Yankees went down fighting this time around. Literally. While a four-game sweep of their division rivals was on the mind of the Toronto Blue Jays, the Yankees were desperately searching for a spark to help keep their slim playoff hopes alive in the series finale Monday at Rogers Centre.
An exchange of beanballs and the two dugout-clearing incidents that followed couldn’t provide it, but a night off for Blue Jays closer Roberto Osuna did.
With the Yankees frustrated by another solid performance out of the left arm of starter J.A. Happ — it’s the fourth-straight day the rotation produced one of those — the Blue Jays were three outs away from slithering away with a 3-2 win and the sweep.
Until the previously-reliable Jason Grilli entered the game — Osuna had pitched the past two days — in the top of the ninth.
Two batters into the final inning, 14-year veteran Mark Teixeira tied the game with one swing, sending a solo home run into the first deck in right field.
After Didi Gregorius singled, right fielder Aaron Hicks duplicated Teixeira’s feat, sending a blast into the second deck to give the Yankees a 5-3 lead.
The Yankees would tack on two more in the inning and, eventually, steal a 7-5 win, after the Jays answered with two runs in the bottom of the ninth but couldn’t get any closer.
Troy Tulowitzki flew out to left field with the bases loaded to end the ballgame.
Happ’s strong start — 7 1/3 innings of six-hit ball with just one earned-run allowed on 96 pitches — was wasted, and the Blue Jays (86-70) now sit just one game up on the idle Baltimore Orioles (8571), a team that’s coming to town Tuesday for a huge three-game series, in the race for the top wildcard spot.
Until the Yankees comeback, actual baseball — you know, hitting, pitching, things like that — took a backseat to the shenanigans Monday night, some of which can be attributed to Happ.
The fun started in the bottom of the first inning when Yankees righty Luis Severino, making a spot start for injured ace Masahiro Tanaka, grazed Josh Donaldson on the elbow pad with a 97 mph fastball, drawing a brief look to the mound from the reigning MVP.
Things escalated in the second inning when Happ plunked leadoff man Chase Headley on his second pitch, clearing the benches for the first time.
While no punches were thrown, it was clear Donaldson wasn’t impressed with Severino hitting him as he walked towards the Yankees dugout from his third base position, jawing the whole time until he was joined by teammates.
Home plate umpire Todd Tichenor issued a warning to both benches, and cooler heads prevailed … for the moment.
It didn’t take long for that to change.
Two pitches into Justin Smoak’s at-bat to leadoff the bottom of the second inning, Severino nailed the Jays first baseman with a 99 mph heater, and the dugouts emptied once again, this time with some meaning.
Players from both sides engaged near home plate, with catchers Russell Martin and Gary Sanchez attempting to square off in full gear, before being separated.
Amidst the fray, Joaquin Benoit was knocked to the ground and it looked like the Blue Jays reliever was stepped on, eventually limping into the dugout, rather than heading back out to the bullpen.
Yankees first baseman Tyler Austin, who wasn’t in the lineup, also looked to have taken a shot to the face, with replays showing a mark under his eye.
In the end, four Yankees were ejected — manager Joe Girardi, pitching coach Larry Rothschild, bench coach Rob Thomson, and Severino — but the Blue Jays were, somehow, spared.
It was Girardi’s third ejection of the season, but he’s still light years behind John Gibbons and his eight ejections in 2016.
Following Benoit’s apparent injury, second baseman Devon Travis was also removed the game at the conclusion of the fifth inning, replaced by Darwin Barney.
While there was no immediate word as to why Travis, the mostconsistent hitter the Jays have employed in the second half of the season, was pulled. But back to actual baseball. The Yankees quickly opened the scoring in the first inning when Brett Gardner’s swinging dribbler was thrown into right field by Martin, allowing the speedy leadoff hitter to get all the way to third base.
Two batters later, Sanchez’s groundout gave the visitors an early 1-0 lead.
After tempers flared through the next inning and a half with the score tied, a Jose Bautista single and a free pass to Martin brought Tulowitzki to the plate with a pair of runners on.
Historically a productive hitter in the final month of the season — evidenced by his 148-career RBI in September/October coming in, the most he has in any month — Tulowitzki doubled off of Jonathan Holder, driving in Bautista for his 78th RBI of the season to make it 2-1.
That ended Holder’s night, but Michael Saunders quickly greeted lefty James Pazos with a bloop single to right field that scored Martin to give the Jays a tworun lead through three innings, a score that would stand up until the eighth inning when a Jacoby Ellsbury single drove in Gardner to cut the Jays lead to 3-2.
That set up Teixeira’s game-tying home run, his 14th of the season and 408th of his career, which kick-started a five-run inning that the Blue Jays couldn’t equal in the bottom of the ninth.