Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium was the kind of baseball game that earns its place in the back of your mind for a while.
The story of last night begins and ends with Trey Yesavage, who continues to haunt Yankee batters.
ICEMAN TURNT 🧊
Ice Trey’s ERA: 1.07 🥶
The fastball was electric all night, and all three of his pitches looked as sharp as they have at any point since that postseason masterclass. The command, the conviction, the sequencing, it was Yesavage at his most complete. Aaron Judge, perhaps the most feared hitter on the planet, walked away with the golden sombrero, going 0-for-4 with four strikeouts, three of which came courtesy of Yesavage.
On the other side, Cam Schlittler was also brilliant. The Yankees’ young ace was dominant through six innings, garnering two earned runs, seven strikeouts, and a 1.50 ERA on the season. Last night was a serious pitchers’ duel, and both arms delivered and then some. The difference in this one came down to one half-inning in the seventh and was truly a dominant battle from both starters all night long.
What followed was likely the most impressive at-bats of the season. 11 total pitches, seven foul balls, grinding through everything Schlittler threw at him and finally ending it with a heater to a low walk in the first run of the game, subsequently ending Schlittler’s evening.
Giménez exemplified exactly what this lineup needs to do more of. Patience, competitiveness late in counts, and making the pitcher work. The Blue Jays have struggled all year to manufacture offence, and working deep in counts, that at-bat was a masterclass in what they need to do more of.
The Yankees, however, started to answer in the bottom of the seventh, getting a pair of pop flies into no man’s land in the bottom of the seventh off Mason Fluharty (remember what I said about luck?). As if that wasn’t frustrating enough, Jesús Sánchez went down hard going after the second one, clutching his chest in visible discomfort and requiring assistance from the training staff before being removed from the game under his own power.
Jesus Sánchez had the wind knocked out of him, so the #BlueJays wanted to get him off his feet.
They’ll check him out tomorrow, but doesn’t sound too serious.
That run also made it a one-run game with the tying run 180 feet away at second base. In that moment, Varland bared down and punched out Amed Rosario to strand the runner and secure his sixth save on the year.
This was the Blue Jays’ fifth win in a one-run game this season. They’ve made a habit of finding ways into these close games, and recently it’s been going alright, and last night at Yankee Stadium, with two losses already in the bank and their backs against the wall, they won the biggest one yet.
The Blue Jays showed up last night, capped by a gold-star seventh inning where they finally looked like a lineup that can grind down an opposing pitching staff. An inning like that could snowball in the right direction for the future and seriously spark the offence. Some power still needs to follow, but if Yesavage and the rest of the rotation keep pitching like this, good results will keep coming.
To summarize, if the Blue Jays want to repeat a run at the division and beyond, especially against the Yankees, it starts with the offence carrying its weight.