On a day where both Jays’ starters pitched well, the offence just couldn’t come up with enough support to get a win.
Henderson Alvarez had one of his better starts of the season. He lasted seven innings, struck out seven, walked none, and gave up five hits. The three runs he allowed in the game all came in the first inning, but he managed to shut it down after that. It was a nice progression from his last start, and an excellent effort from Alvarez to prove he deserves a shot at a rotation spot come Spring Training.
Darren Oliver pitched the eighth inning and gave up New York’s fourth run, to make it 4-2. Ichiro Suzuki hit a ground-rule double and scored on Nick Swisher’s single to left. The extra run stung twice as it was scored with two out and after the Jays had scored two runs in the top of the inning to come within one.
For the Jays’ offense, although they were late to the scoreboard, got things going in the eighth with Brett Lawrie leading off with a double. Adam Lind followed with a single to put runners on the corners. Kelly Johnson, pinch-hitting for Jeff Mathis, hit a single to left to score Lawrie. With one out, Omar Vizquel hit a double to right to score Lind, and put himself and Johnson in scoring position. For Vizquel, it was a historic day as he surpassed Babe Ruth for total career hits. His run scoring double in the eighth gave him sole possession of the 40th spot on the all-time hits list.
Game two was a much closer contest, with Ricky Romero showing brilliant flashes of his old self. Although his walk total matched his strikeouts at five, Romero did an excellent job at pitching out of some very tight situations, keeping the Yankees from scoring more than one run on seven hits over his six innings pitched.
Again, the Jays’ offense was unable to muster much in the way of scoring. Yankee’s starter David Phelps did a pretty good job keeping them off the bases, only giving up three hits and three walks over 6.2 innings. His six strikeouts on the afternoon were effective in killing anything the Jays wanted to run together to try and score.
Both teams scored in the second inning. With two on via the walk and two out, Adeiny Hechavarria singled to centre and scored J.P. Arencibia from second. In the bottom half, with two on via the walk and one out, Suzuki hit a single to centre. Jayson Nix attempted to score from second, but was thrown out on a laser shot from Colby Rasmus. In the next at-bat, Chris Stewart hit a ground-rule double which scored Casey McGehee from third.
Steve Delabar was given the loss after giving up an RBI single to Suzuki in the eighth.
Of the two losses, the second was by far the hardest as Romero’s effort was worthy of the win.
Game three goes at 7:05pm on Thursday.
