PLAY (SNOW) BALL!
Flakes in forecast for Yanks’ home opener
TORONTO — Well, at least it didn’t snow.
Everything else about this Easter Sunday meltdown went sideways, of course. The new manager made a questionable strategic decision. The old reliable reliever made a dubious pitch. The starting pitcher didn’t make it out of the fifth inning. The offense took eight innings off.
The Yankees lost to the Blue Jays 7-4 after leading 4-1, and so they break even for their weekend in Canada, two wins and two losses and, you would suspect, an urgent wish to kiss the ground once they’re back home in New York.
“I think we all wish this could have gone better,” said Sonny Gray, the starting pitcher, who labored through four-plus innings and 89 pitches. Gray faced 21 batters, and 16 of those hitters were up with men on base, which means it was a miracle he walked off the mound with a three-run lead.
And it explains why he was in the clubhouse when Justin Smoak ruined the Yankees’ day, first in the seventh inning with a two-run homer off Tommy Kahnle, then in the eighth with a two-out, full-count grand slam off David Robertson.
So it will be a grouchy gaggle of Yankees who will report to Yankee Stadium on Monday morning for the home opener, and it probably won’t improve anyone’s mood that it’s supposed to be snowing most of the morning.
Perhaps that can actually be a favorable harbinger: It seems all Yankees fans of a certain age remember 1996, the home opener against Kansas City, which was spent almost entirely in conditions better suited to a Winter Classic hockey game. The Yankees won that game, handed out free tickets for the hardy souls who stuck around and kept winning all the way through Game 6 of the World Series that year.
So if you’re looking for omens, that’s a pretty good one.
It will be a good time for the Yankees to rediscover the comforts of home, even if they have to wear turtlenecks for a couple of days. The billion-dollar offense scuffled a bit in Toronto after Giancarlo Stanton’s spectacular two-homer debut on Opening Day, and would have been in even bigger trouble if not for huge contributions from Tyler Wade on Friday night and Tyler Austin on Saturday.
Sunday’s low-profile bomber was Brandon Drury, who clobbered an 0-2 hanging slider from
Marcus Stroman in the third inning to give the Yankees that 4-1 lead. The Yanks, in fact, scored all four of their runs with two outs and nobody on in that inning. That’s the good news.
They didn’t scratch the rest of the day against five Toronto pitchers and managed only two other hits. That’s the bad news. “We’ll come around, I feel pretty confident believing that,” said Aaron Boone, the Yankees manager, who for the second straight day was reminded he’s not in Kansas — or the even safer confines of the broadcast booth — anymore.
On Saturday, he stayed with Dellin Betances for an extra in- ning and it backfired on him. On Sunday, he decided to walk Josh Donaldson (with good career numbers against Robertson) to load the bases for Smoak (with dreadful digits against Robertson) even though Smoak had crushed a homer just an inning earlier. That didn’t work, either.
Tough gig. Welcome to the big office.
“I don’t get caught up in recent small history,” Boone said, by way of explanation, not that it mattered what he would have said. Joe Girardi can tell him what the blowback is going to be for too many of those ill-fated choices, if he chooses to ask.
Though it seems Boone should be spared Monday, weather per- mitting, when the Yankees officially take the field for the first time, when 50,000 folks who have waited patiently for (appropriately) 162 days since Game 5 of the ALCS will return to Yankee Stadium.
You would expect Boone to be given a warm greeting, despite his rocky start. You would certainly expect some deafening hellos for Aaron Judge and Didi Gregorius, two of the biggest reasons last year lasted as long as it did. And when Stanton trots out for his greeting, the welcome may reach some old-school Jeterian or Mariano-esque levels. It’ll be good to be home.
Even if it snows.