YANKS BLANKED BY JAYS IN OPENER OF HUGE SERIES
Girardi getting cranky as playoff hopes fade
TORONTO – The Yankees aren’t ready to wave the white flag just yet. Perhaps they should try hitting with one.
The Bombers’ bats surely weren’t doing the trick Friday night as the Blue Jays blanked them, 9-0, handing the Yankees their second shutout loss in as many nights.
With nine games remaining on the schedule, the Yankees are five games behind the wild card-leading Blue Jays and four behind the Tigers for the second wild card spot.
“Things are kind of slipping away at this point,” Brett Gardner said. “We’re not out of it, but definitely not in a good position. It’s frustrating.”
Joe Girardi tried to remain optimistic during his postgame press conference, but he took umbrage with a question about his decision to use Blake Parker in the seventh with a three-run deficit — more specifically, whether he still considered a threerun spread to be close given the state of his offense — and stormed out of his own office, declaring, “I’m done. I’m done. That’s it.”
Girardi was speaking about his interview session, but he may as well be speaking of his team, which faces a monumental task with single-digit games remaining on the schedule. The Yankees’ elimination number – any combination of New York losses and Detroit wins – is down to six.
“Just try to finish strong and take it one game at a time; that’s all you can do,” Dellin Betances said. “Obviously we’re not in the best position, but all you can do is play hard and hope for the best.”
Francisco Liriano and three relievers held the Yankees to three hits – two of them by Gary Sanchez, of course – as the Blue Jays slugged their way to a win in the first of four weekend games Girardi called “the biggest series of the year” Thursday.
After getting off to a rocky start, Bryan Mitchell held the Blue Jays to three runs (one earned) over six innings, but Parker imploded in the seventh, giving up four runs as the Blue Jays blew the game wide open. Josh Donaldson capped the night with a two-run homer off Ben Heller in the eighth.
“I thought Mitch pitched a pretty good game; probably should have gave up the one run in six innings,” Girardi said, referring to Billy Butler’s first-inning error that led to two Toronto runs. “We just weren’t able to get anything going.”
The Yankees haven’t scored in 18 innings, losing two in a row and nine of their last 12 as they move dangerously close to falling out of the postseason picture. Given their position, anything short of a four-game sweep against the Blue Jays probably wouldn’t have been enough, but now they’ll have to try to win three out of four.
“Crazier things have happened,” Gardner said. “We’ve just got to win. It’s not a case of watching the scoreboard and hoping that whoever beats Seattle or Baltimore or whoever else is ahead of us. We’ve got to win the games that we have left to play. If we don’t do that, we’re not going to get to where we need to be at.”
Butler’s error on the second play of the Toronto first helped the Jays load the bases with two out, setting up Tulowitzki’s two-run single that opened the scoring.
“You can’t dwell on that,” Mitchell said of the error. “If I sit there and focus on that, I’m not really paying attention to the guy batting. You just have to move past that and try to get the next guy.”
The Blue Jays loaded them up again in the second, then Mitchell walked Edwin Encarnacion, pushing the lead to 3-0.
He escaped the inning without any more damage, getting Jose Bautista to ground into an inningending double play thanks to a nice play by second baseman Ronald Torreyes.
“Honestly, I didn’t feel like I had great stuff tonight,” Mitchell said. “I just kind of made pitches when I needed to.”
The Yankees’ best chance against Liriano came with the bases loaded and two out in the first, but Chase Headley struck out to end the threat.
A Tulowitzki error and a Jacoby Ellsbury single put two runners on to start the third, but Liriano retired the 3-4-5 hitters to strand two more runners. The Yankees didn’t have another at-bat with a runner in scoring position all night, finishing 0-for-4.
“It’s hard when you’re at the end and there’s not many games left,” Betances said. “Even though we been playing good, we’re coming up a little short.”