Leading Off: Toronto Blue Jays
The best hitter in baseball and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Newsday).
(Note - the embed feature on Squarespace is not working as of this morning, so I’ve hyperlinked the necessary videos and we will embed them once we can.)
Here come the Yankees! The red hot Bronx Bombers ride a six game winning streak into their Opening Day rematch with the Toronto (Dunedin, soon to be Buffalo) Blue Jays. The Yanks are hot, the Jays are...not. It seems like a pretty good week for a series win, don’t you think? Given that that’s been every week for the Yankees, I’d say so.
2021 Blue Jays So Far
The Blue Jays season has been going downhill in the last few weeks, mostly due to poor performance against their division rivals Boston and Tampa. The Jays lost all but one of the games they played against these opponents, which has sent them down to fourth place in the AL East, 5.5 games off the lead. Toronto has dealt with a variety of injuries, most notably to George Springer, and ballpark adversity (Canada has not let them play in their home park, forcing them to play on the road in Dunedin and Buffalo). Despite that, the Jays have mostly hung around until recently.
Toronto’s offense centers around three players - Marcus Semien, Bo Bichette, and the unstoppable Vlad Guerrero Jr., who is having a breakout season at age 22. He’s hitting .345/.445/.665 with 15 home runs and tried his best to help his team eke out a win vs. Tampa with his multi home run game yesterday.
All of those players have an OPS above .800, with Vlad’s being well above that mark. Tesocar Hernandez and Yankee Killer Randall Grichuk are also having solid years, but beating Toronto starts and ends with handling those three players. They have helped Toronto to an above average offense, which ranks third in the league in runs scored and home runs. On the pitching side, things are a bit less bright. Hyun-Jin Ryu has had a standout second season in Toronto with a 2.51 ERA and Robbie Ray has fixed his command issues to provide another solid arm, but the majority of the Blue Jays rotation is either hurt or pitching poorly. Their team ERA is seventh in the league and mostly propped up by some exemplary bullpen performances.
Bullpen Breakdown
The Toronto bullpen is one of the surprises of this season, as a unit that everyone thought would be subpar has more than held its own and helped the Jays to some early season success. Jordan Romano has flummoxed the Yankees this year with his changeup and joins a rejuvenated Tyler Chatwood and Joel Payamps as the top pitchers from this unit. Chatwood blew Sunday’s game to the Rays but has been very good this year in his second life as a reliever. Closer Rafael Dolis sports an unsightly ERA but has pitched well against the Yankees, so who knows? Hopefully the Yankee offense is better now than it was a month ago. Unfortunately for Toronto, their bullpen got shellacked in Monday’s finale against the Rays, giving up nine runs in extra innings. Most of their significant pitchers are not rested, so an early knockout of Steven Matz on Tuesday could mean good news for the Yankees. The New York bullpen had their own rough day Sunday (in which they still won the game because the Yankees are actually good), but is largely well rested because of the off day yesterday and the lengthy starting outings in the previous games. Everyone should be available for tonight’s game if needed to support Corey Kluber.
Pitching Matchups
Tuesday: Steven Matz vs. Corey Kluber
Steven Matz gets the opening game for the Blue Jays and he’s a player that Yankees fans are familiar with from his time with the Mets. After a series of years that vacillated between promise and poor performance, Matz was traded to Toronto this offseason for some prospects. He was counted on to provide stability to a beleaguered rotation but has done something less than that, putting up a 4.69 ERA in his nine starts. His last time out saw him get pounded by the Red Sox for five runs in six innings. Matz tops out at about 94 with his fastball and pairs it with a curveball and changeup to face hitters. In his career, he has started against the Yankees five times and gotten pounded to the tune of a 6.83 ERA. The Yankees don’t do well against righties or slow tossing lefties, but if you’re a lefty with an average fastball velocity, they will tear you apart. There isn’t really a memorable Yankees moment against Matz, but his plunking of Mark Teixeira in 2016 led to the benches clearing between the Yankees and Mets.
Opposing Matz will be Corey Kluber, rocking a hitless innings streak and looking to keep the Yankee rotation scoreless inning streak going past 35. Kluber has started twice against Toronto this year and failed to make it to the fifth inning each time. That was April Corey; now we have May Corey and he will undoubtedly be much better this time.
Wednesday: Alek Manoah vs. Domingo German
Whenever a player named Alec/Alek enters the world of professional sports, I have to show him the proper respect. There are only a few of them out there, but they are a proud and strong community. Alec Bohm, Alec Burks and Alec Mills have carried the name proudly, and now Alek Manoah enters the fray. Manoah, although he spells his name weirdly, is one of the Blue Jays top pitching prospects and will make his MLB debut on Wednesday. He grew up in Florida, pitched for West Virginia, and was drafted 11th overall by Toronto in 2019. This season, he has a 0.50 for Triple A Buffalo.
Opposing him will be Domingo German, who, like all other Yankee pitchers, is coming off a shutout against Texas. German pitched poorly in his season debut vs. Toronto, but has thrown much better in his last few starts. He will look to continue his run of good pitching against the Jays, with a 3.86 ERA against them in six career games.
Thursday: Robbie Ray vs. Jordan Montgomery
Robert Ray, a frequent Yankees trade target, was the other offseason rotation supplement for Toronto - they traded for him last summer and re-signed him this year. Ray has improved his command greatly (walk rate down to 5.2% from 14.4% in 2020) which has been an issue for him in the past and is now sporting a 3.42 ERA as the Blue Jays second starter. Ray was in the Didi Gregorius trade way back when and has spent his career either dazzling or struggling for the Diamondbacks and now the Blue Jays. When we said Toronto’s pitching is suspect, this is what we mean - even the good starters have a history of inconsistency. Ray faced the Yankees in his season debut in mid April and lost to Gerrit Cole and the homer happy Kyle Higashioka then, but didn’t pitch too poorly. In his career against the Yankees, he’s pitched quite well with a 2.25 ERA in three starts.
Jordan Montgomery will face Ray as he comes off the best start of his career against the White Sox. The Blue Jays are another tough lineup against left handed pitchers, so Monty will look to keep it rolling with the same success he had against Chicago.
Yankees vs. Blue Jays History
The Yankees and the Blue Jays have played many times throughout the years because of their division rivalry, but their most contentious period was 2015-2016. This was when a rising Toronto team knocked off an aging Yankees team to win the AL East and make the postseason in back to back years. There were many memorable games from this time period and these two teams were never afraid to get chippy with each other. From the Yankee perspective, the best moment had to have been Andrew Miller striking out Troy Tulowitzki in a lengthy and game deciding at bat. Two former Yankees squaring off at their primes. You love to see it.
Thoughts Before the Series
The American League East is a death match right now. The Yankees, Red Sox and Rays are the three best teams in the American League and the Blue Jays are the best fourth place team in baseball. Only the NL West, with the Dodgers, Padres and Giants, is comparable. The Yankees and Rays have gotten hot in recent weeks and caught up to Boston to keep all three teams within a half game of each other. The AL East is always a tough division, but the reemergence of the Red Sox and the strong play of the Rays and Blue Jays present multiple challenges for the Yankees. They have gone 22-8 in the last month and are still not in first place, which is frankly quite absurd. It shows that anything less than their best play will not be enough to compete. The Yankees will get a prime opportunity to jump Boston and Tampa in the standings next week with head to head play, but will also need to take care of business against Toronto and Detroit this week to keep pace. The AL East is once against a gauntlet and if the Yankees can win a division they have won just twice in the last decade, they will have earned it.
We may be closing in on Memorial Day, but it was Gleyber Day weekend in the Bronx last weekend. Gleyber Torres has been on fire in his last week of baseball, and really over his last month. This weekend, he had a major hand in all three Yankee wins.
Since Torres failed to hustle out a ground ball and was summarily sent to the minors by the entirety of the Yankees fan base, he has hit .349/.414/.470 with 17 RBI. The power numbers aren’t quite what we’re used to, but an .883 OPS from the shortstop position is All Star caliber. Torres has looked much more comfortable at the plate and has been getting all kinds of hits - line drive singles, booming doubles, and the occasional home run. His defense at shortstop has correspondingly improved as well. We forget that baseball, like all sports, is a mental game and it was clear that Torres was pressing at the plate and in the field in April. His improvement since the season’s first 15 games has coincided with the Yankees general improvement - since he began hitting better, the Yankees have gone 22-8. A productive Torres makes the lineup that much deeper and helps out Judge and Urshela. I’d go as far as to say Gleyber Torres might be the most important non- Aaron Judge hitter on the Yankees. He’s certainly proven his impact over the last few days.
The keys to winning this series against Toronto are to keep pitching well and hope the offense can figure out how to scratch across a few runs. The Yankee arms shut down Chicago, but Toronto has an offense that gives Yankee fans nightmares. If the Yankees can keep Vlad Jr (who just had a big series in Tampa), Bichette and Semien under control, they stand a good chance of winning the series. A Toronto sweep would help to put more distance between New York and the Jays and potentially help the Yankees take over the division lead for the first time all year. The Yankees have played extremely well in the last month, but the real test will begin soon and as we mentioned above, this division will require flawless play all season long.
Game time is 7:05 tonight, as the Yankees look to win their seventh in a row and Corey Kluber looks to throw his second no hitter in a row. Both attainable goals, don’t you think?
