Rain postpones opener of Jays-Yankees series
NEW YORK — The Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees had to wait another day for the start of their AL East showdown.
The opener of the four-game series between division-leading Toronto and the second-place Yankees was postponed because of rain on Thursday night more than an hour before the scheduled first pitch.
The teams will make the game up with a doubleheader Saturday starting at 1:05 p.m. The second game starts a halfhour after the opener ends.
Toronto has a 11⁄ 2- game lead over the Yankees after both teams lost two of three against division rivals this week.
Blue Jays ace David Price had been set to start Thursday against Yankees rookie Luis Severino. They will each get the ball today.
“It’s not ideal for your pitching,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “The thought process is you’re probably not going to use relievers twice in a day. You might, depending on how hard they were worked and what their workload was before. ... It just changes your flexibility in a sense.”
The clubs will stay on sched- ule with their rotations. New York will start Michael Pineda and Ivan Nova on Saturday, but Girardi did not say in what order.
Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said Marco Estrada will start the first game and Marcus Stroman will make his season debut in the nightcap.
Girardi acknowledged this was the Yankees’ most significant series since they were last in the playoffs in 2012. Price sees the big weekend differently.
“Every series we play is important now,” he said after the rainout. “You can’t put any more importance on any certain game or any certain series. We all know that we need to win games and keep playing the same baseball that we’ve been playing.”
That’s been some stellar baseball since Price, Troy Tulowitzki and Ben Revere arrived in trades before the trade deadline, going 29-9 since Tulowitzki’s first game on July 29.
The Yankees had a sevengame lead in the division the day the Blue Jays made their first big move — a trade with Colorado that also brought reliever LaTroy Hawkins to help stabilize a shaky bullpen.