Stroman shuts out baffled Yanks
Jays increase AL East lead as young right-hander goes seven strong innings
David Price has apparently anointed Marcus Stroman with a new nickname: Tylenol.
It isn’t as catchy as “Stroshow” — or even “Stro,” the simple abbreviation preferred by John Gibbons — but it is a ringing endorsement from his allstar colleague.
“This young champion right here fires me up!!!” Price wrote on Instagram with a picture of Stroman. “Always fun to play with guys like Tylenol.”
Price, the Blue Jays’ ace lefty, is riffing on an old baseball metaphor — “he’s throwing pills” — as in, that’s how the ball looks to the batter, who has about as much a chance of hitting one.
After Wednesday night the New York Yankees would likely agree with him, as Stroman threw seven shutout innings — in his third start since his improbable return from the disabled list — to lead the Jays to a key 4-0 victory in the rubber match against their closest rival.
With the win, the Jays increase their lead atop the American League East to 3.5 games with just 10 games remaining.
Wednesday’s game-winning hit came off the bat of Kevin Pillar, while Russell Martin put the game away in the seventh with a three-run homer, his 21st of the season.
Although this last series was tightly played, the Jays dominated the season series against the Yankees this year, winning 13 of their 19 meetings — more than ever before in franchise history.
And it was in the eighth inning when the “Yankees Suck!” chants started to rise up from the 48,056 in attendance at the Rogers Centre — the Jays’ ninth straight sellout — who smelled blood as the Jays inch closer toward their first playoff berth in 22 years.
The players, likewise, made no effort to hide their excitement. Stro- man, ever expressive, leapt off the mound and bounded into the dugout after nearly ever inning; Josh Donaldson, who had three hits and scored on Martin’s homer, cheered like a fan when the ball went over the left-field wall; and Pillar seemed to match Stroman’s excitement when he made the final out on a hard liner in the seventh inning.
“Just the fact that the park is sold out, crowd is electric, makes those moments stand out even more,” said Martin of his game-breaking homer. “If the crowd wasn’t as loud as it was it wouldn’t feel the same.”
Whenever this season is over for the Jays, they will have to decide how much they’re willing to spend to keep Price, their hired gun, in the fold. But if he decides to walk they can at least be comforted in the knowledge Stroman is a budding ace-in-waiting.
“He wants to become Price,” Gibbons said before the game.
And for the more pressing short term, Price and Stroman stand to be a formidable duo at the front of the Jays’ playoff rotation — as fearsome as any one-two pitching punch in the American League.
“Having that guy waiting at the top step after every inning is definitely motivating,” Stroman said of Price, who donned a batting glove to protect himself from Stroman’s enthusiastic between-inning high-fives. “He’s the man and I’m just lucky to be on his team.”
Stroman lives for the big moments, to pitch in the limelight, and Wednesday was the latest one for him and the Jays.
“It was really the perfect game for him to be pitching.” Gibbons said. “It was a big game, a big game, and he came through.”
Yankees starter Ivan Nova, who was blown up by the Jays earlier this month in New York and banished to the bullpen, was given the spot start on Wednesday in place of Masahiro Tanaka, who’s hobbled by a hamstring injury.
The veteran right-hander fared much better against the lineup that had so tormented him less than two weeks ago, holding the Jays off the board through the first five innings.