TORONTO — If we were still in April, they would shrug this one off as quickly as would Amanda Bynes a parking ticket. They would tip their caps to Brandon Morrow, vow to straighten out Ivan Nova and head out care-free into North America’s cleanest city.
Instead, the Yankees’ 6-0 loss to the Blue Jays last night at Rogers Centre, feels like a golden opportunity blown. Their postseason position remains very much up in the air.
The loss dropped the Yankees (90-66) to just one game ahead of the Orioles (89-67), who didn’t play, in the American League East, with each club facing six more games. The stakes are enormous; the Yankees want absolutely no part of the one-game, wild-card playoff they would face if they lose the divisional battle to Baltimore.
“We haven’t played extremely well in this ballpark this year,” Nick Swisher said of the Yankees, who are 2-4 at Rogers. “We need to pick it up, because we’ve got somebody right on our tails.”
Though the Yankees can say they have won nine of their last 12 games, they also have lost three of five, though the urgency to keep winning hasn’t subsided.
If you’re looking for a silver lining, the Angels’ 9-4 loss to Seattle means the Yankees remain four games ahead in the race just to make the playoffs, meaning they really would have to fall apart to finish out of the hunt altogether. Yet that’s setting the bar too low. The urgency with which the Yankees have approached these past few weeks, as manager Joe Girardi worked his key relief pitchers extremely hard, means that anything short of an AL East title will be a disappointment.
Maybe last night was as simple as a pitching mismatch, Toronto’s best starter Morrow going against a guy in Nova who very well might not get anywhere near a mound in a postseason setting.
“We lost a game,” Girardi said. “So we need to come out and win a game [tonight]. That’s all.”
Nevertheless, when the tension is so high and the schedule so short, you naturally wonder whether there will be any carryover.
The Jays disposed of Nova before the game even became official, while Morrow worked a pain-free seven innings, walking three and striking out three while allowing four hits. Forget about hitting with runners in scoring position on this night; the Yankees advanced just three runners to second base and none to third base.
The Yankees best rally of the night occurred in the seventh, when, down 4-0, Robinson Cano led off with a double and Swisher walked. It ended there, as Curtis Granderson struck out and Russell Martin and Raul Ibanez both flied out to right field. By the time Alex Rodriguez and Cano kicked off the ninth with a hit by pitch and a base hit, the deficit was 6-0, and that rally fizzled, too, against ageless Toronto reliever Darren Oliver.
Hence what could have been a two-game gap fizzled down to one, which had to please the resting Orioles.
“I didn’t know they had a night off,” Swisher said.
Said Martin: “I’m not concerned about other teams. I’m concerned about our team.”
In that case, Martin’s team had best put up some wins, because the Orioles have given little indication that they’re happy to settle for the wild card.
It’s why commissioner Bud Selig and the Players Association can nod with satisfaction that the new playoff structure is working. For this result would have generated shrugs not only last April, but also in previous Septembers, when the difference between a division title and a wild card equaled one extra postseason home game.
“Still one game. That’s big,” Swisher said of the Yankees’ edge. “What’s it, six games left to go? We’ve got a little six-game playoff race.”
The Yankees have shown they’re good enough to win the race. Even more so, though, they haven’t displayed that they’re strong enough to run away with this. Which means we could be looking at six more days of playoff-intensity ball before we even kick off the actual playoffs.