The 11-game win streak is no more! The Yankees have taken down the Blue Jays 4-3 thanks to Carlos Beltran at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario. The winning pitcher was Ivan Nova, who improves to 5-4. The losing pitcher is Aaron Sanchez who falls to 6-5. The Yankees improve to 63-51 and the Blue Jays fall to 64-53.
The Blue Jays got on the board first in the 3rd inning when Troy Tulowitzki hit into a fielder’s choice scoring Kevin Pillar. Two batters later, Jose Bautista doubled to left, scoring Tulowitzki to make it 2-0. And the very next batter, Edwin Encarnacion, hit a sac fly to score Josh Donaldson, to make it 3-0. That’s the way it would stay until the Yankees started to chip away in the 8th inning.
In the 8th inning with one out, Mark Teixeira hit a slow ground ball single up the middle. Next up was catcher Brian McCann hit a bloop single that landed right in front of Ben Revere, that moved Texieria to 2nd. Chase Headley followed, and he smashed one that landed a few feet in front of the warning track and bounced over the wall for a ground rule double, which scored Tex to make it a 3-1 game.
After that, John Gibbons took the ball from David Price and handed it to Aaron Sanchez. Next batter up was Carlos Beltran, pinch hitting for Chris Young, and on a 1-2 count, Beltran took Aaron Sanchez deep to give the Yankees a 4-3 lead. The homerun by Beltran is arguably the biggest homer of the season thus far.
With the win tonight, the Yankees end the Blue Jays 11-game win streak and retake 1st place in the AL East with a half game lead. The last at bat of the game between Andrew Miller and Troy Tulowitzki. The at-bat lasted 12 pitches before Miller got the best of Tulo and struck him out. The 1-5 hitters for the Yankees went 6-23 in this game with Gardner getting two of those hits. The Yankees dugout looked to be buzzing and really upbeat with excitement as Beltran came back to the dugout after the homerun.
Joe Girardi was asked what was going through his mind in the last at bat when Tulo kept fouling off pitches and he said, “Just hit one of those groundballs to someone that’s what you’re saying, you know, he’s a great player, Andrew Miller’s a great player and it was a great battle but Andrew got a big strikeout.”
On the other side, John Gibbons manager of the Blue Jays talked about leaving Price in in the 8th until the ground rule double, “Well, It was a tough decision no question about it, it backfired, I was looking at him it was a long grueling night for him, he was really good. They were getting a lot of hits and then they strung three together, I think it was and you know after the big double, I felt good about bringing Sanchie in and you know and it didn’t work out but yeah. Those don’t work, you analyze that’s for sure and tonight it didn’t work.”
The Yankees and Blue Jays go back at it tomorrow afternoon at the Rogers Centre. The Yankees get Masahiro Tanaka on the mound tomorrow. The Blue Jays are sending Marco Estrada to the mound. The Yankees are looking to extend their first place lead while the Jays are looking to regain first place tomorrow.
