Jays can be spoilers — or cannon fodder
Will be a factor in pennant race
NEW YORK The Toronto Blue Jays will have an impact on the American League East pennant race, just not in the manner their fans expected when the season began.
Set for four games in three days in New York starting Tuesday, the bottom-feeding Blue Jays will play 22 of their 38 remaining games against AL East opponents. The Jays are 21-33 in their own division.
Ten of their remaining games are against the Yankees. That does not bode particularly well for the Jays, given that New York already has beaten them in eight of nine games this season.
This week’s series starts with a day-night doubleheader on Tuesday. Esmil Rogers gets the 1:05 p.m. start, with Mark Buehrle working the 7:05 game. The Yankees will counter with Phil Hughes and Ivan Nova.
The Jays are coming off a typical weekend in Tampa Bay, where they win about as often as Florida’s summer humidity wanes. They did win one of three games, but a sluggish offence and a touch of bad luck killed their chance for a series victory on Sunday.
Pitching in his hometown of St. Petersburg before family and friends, Todd Redmond allowed only one run in six innings. With the score 1-1 in the top of the ninth, Edwin Encarnacion missed a home run by inches, his hit bouncing off the cushion atop the left-field wall and landing on the field for a double.
Then in the bottom of the 10th, Jose Lobaton hit a walk off homer off Brad Lincoln. The career .228 hitter also won Friday’s game with a walk off triple off Aaron Loup.
Manager John Gibbons made it clear that his personal frustration level is climbing.
“We wasted a great pitching outing,” he told reporters. “The last couple of weeks we’ve been pitching our butt off and our offence has disappeared ...
“If you’re going to play in prime time you’ve got to win those games sooner or later. We’ve had so many of them over the course of the season and we haven’t been able to win them, that’s the difference. Big hits, big time, got to step up.”
In their past nine games, Toronto starters have logged a collective 2.57 ERA while the offence has batted .199.
The Jays have lost 45 of their last 61 games at Tropicana Field. They have three games left against the Rays in the season’s final series at the Rogers Centre.
Entering play Monday, the Red Sox led the Rays by one game, Baltimore by 41/2 and the Yankees by 71/2. Boston has lost seven of 10 games and dropped two of three to the Yankees in Fenway Park on the weekend.
The Yankees, with the Alex Rodriguez sideshow back in town, have won seven of 10 while the Jays have lost seven of 11.
Toronto comes to New York with a 57-67 record and a typical assortment of injuries.