Last night’s game with the Blue Jays had to leave the Yankees wondering: “When do we play the Mets again?”
A day after scoring eight runs in one inning against the Amazin’s, the Yankees barely mustered three in nine in a 7-3 loss to the Blue Jays before a crowd of 41,946 fans at Yankee Stadium.
Blue Jays starting pitcher Carlos Villanueva made his first start since 2009 and stymied the Yankees’ bats with an assortment of off-speed pitches. The Yankees managed just two hits off him and struck out five times in five innings. They only had one extra-base hit in the game.
“We’re not going to go out there and score six, eight, 10 runs every night,” said Brett Gardner, one of the few Yankees who hit, going 2-for-4. “Today was one of those days. We really didn’t get a whole lot going. We have to come out here tomorrow and turn the page.”
Bartolo Colon was effective through five innings, but stumbled in the sixth. Jose Bautista hit his major league leading 19th home run in the first inning to give the Jays a 1-0 lead, but Colon allowed little over the next few innings.
The Yankees tied it at 1-1 in the fourth on a sacrifice fly by Robinson Cano that allowed Curtis Granderson to score. Cano drove in Granderson for all three of the Yankees’ runs.
The Bombers hoped they were over their problems with runners in scoring position after scoring eight runs in the seventh inning on Sunday without hitting a home run. But the issue reappeared last night, when they were 2-for-15 with RISP.
In the sixth inning, a decision by manager Joe Girardi and some rare control problems got Colon (2-3) into trouble. Corey Patterson led off the inning with a double to right field. Colon then intentionally walked Bautista, which no one could question considering Bautista’s flaming-hot bat. After Yunel Escobar moved the runners to second and third with a sacrifice bunt, things got a little interesting.
Girardi jogged to the mound to chat with Colon with Juan Rivera coming to the plate to order an intentional walk to load the bases. He liked the chances of Colon getting a double-play ball from Aaron Hill, but the move backfired when Hill’s groundball found the gap between Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, giving Toronto a 2-1 lead.
“We’ve got a groundball pitcher on the mound,” Girardi said, explaining the move. “The next three guys were 0-for-6 with four strikeouts. We took a shot and it didn’t work.”
The inning then completely unraveled when Colon walked Eric Thames on four pitches to push another run across. J.P. Arencibia drilled a double to the wall in front of the Yankees’ bullpen in right-center and cleared the bases, making it 6-1.
“Just one tough inning and they took advantage of it,” first baseman Mark Teixeira said. “We just couldn’t get the big out.”
After beating up on Chris Capuano and Mike Pelfrey over the weekend, the Yankees wanted to believe they had turned the page on their struggles at the plate. But Villanueva (2-0) continued the long-standing trend of the Yankees failing against pitchers they have not seen often.
The Yankees had faced Villanueva twice as a reliever this season, but this was his first start against the Bombers. He replaced Jesse Litsch, who is on the disabled list.
“Obviously you get a good, little streak going and you feel like you’re doing good things at the plate you obviously want to keep it going,” catcher Russell Martin said. “We’re not going to let this one game bring us down. We’ve got to put this one behind us and get ready for the next one.”