After Drew Hutchison got lit up by the Boston Red Sox on Monday night, failing to get out of the third inning in an eventual 14-1 Blue Jays’ loss, there was reason to wonder if the 23-year-old had hit a bit of a wall as he nears the end of the second year since his Tommy John surgery.
Hutchison had looked so good for the Blue Jays early in the season, but after throwing seven shutout innings at the Baltimore Orioles on June 13th, the young righty had been just awful in five of his next six starts, culminating with that outing against the Red Sox that was so bad that it made people speculate that Boston might have known what was coming.
Over the course of those six starts, Hutchison posted a 6.97 ERA and a WHIP of 1.742. He was allowing an opponents’ OPS of .813, which basically meant everyone who stepped up to face him was a little bit better than Orioles’ all-star centre fielder Adam Jones.
Included in those horrible numbers is a terrific Canada Day start against the Brewers in which Hutchison gave up a run on three hits over seven innings, which shows you just how bad those other five starts were.
So after Mark Buehrle got lit up by the Yankees in the Blue Jays’ 17th straight loss in The Bronx Friday night, it was fair to approach Hutchison’s Saturday start with trepidation. But the youngster gave the Blue Jays exactly what they needed and wound up being the first Blue Jays starter to pick up a win at Yankee Stadium since J.A. Happ did it almost 23 months ago.
Not only did Hutchison pitch well, he pitched with a bit of a burr in his saddle. Jose Bautista was hit by a Chris Capuano pitch with two out and nobody on in the top of the first, so Hutchison responded by drilling Yankees’ clean-up hitter Carlos Beltran on the right hip on his first pitch to him. It wasn’t exactly the best time to do it, since there was a runner on first who was moved into scoring position, but Hutchison followed the revenge hit batsman by striking out Brian McCann to end the inning.
He would later give up a two-run homer to McCann, but that was the extent of the Yankees’ damage against him over 6 2/3 innings of four-hitter.
Hutchison’s velocity was down – his fastball was hanging out around 90 and 91 miles per hour most of the afternoon, a tick or two below his average fastball velocity of 92 for the season to this point. Even with that, though, he managed seven strikeouts including a big one of Chase Headley with two outs and the go-ahead run in scoring position in the bottom of the fifth after the Blue Jays had tied it up in the top of the frame.
It was a very encouraging outing for Hutchison, who should be a big part of any Blue Jays’ success in the final third of the season, but it will be interesting to see how he follows it up in his next start in Houston. After all, the Canada Day start was very encouraging as well, and was followed by three clunkers.
Hutchison got the win because of a wacky top of the seventh inning that saw the Yankees basically hand the Blue Jays the lead. Melky Cabrera greeted reliever Shawn Kelley with a leadoff walk, went to third on a Jose Bautista double into the left-field corner, and then the fun began.
Dioner Navarro was next, and he hit a ground ball to first where it was fielded in front of the bag by catcher-turned-first baseman Brian McCann. Cabrera stunted off of third base enough to draw McCann’s attention, but instead of running right at Melky, McCann stayed put and faked a throw to third. By that point, Bautista had taken off and was three-quarters of the way to the still-occupied third base, so McCann took a look at him but also neither ran towards the baserunner nor threw the baseball. While all that was going on, Navarro was trucking right past him on his way to first base, loading the bases for the Blue Jays thanks to McCann’s refusal to take his choice of any one of the three outs the Blue Jays were handing him.
After Steve Tolleson struck out, Dan Johnson greeted lefty reliever Matt Thornton with a humpback liner just past the mound. It dropped in front of Yankees’ second baseman Brian Roberts and he couldn’t corral it, so what should have been an inning-ending double play resulted in an RBI single that gave the Blue Jays the lead for good.
In the top of the 9th, Johnson struck again, this time with his first home run as a Blue Jay; the three-run shot gave his new team some much-needed breathing room and allowed them to pick up the victory despite Carlos Beltran’s two-run shot in the bottom of the frame.
Not only did the Blue Jays’ win end the 17-game road losing streak against the Yankees, it also lifted the Jays back into a second-place tie in the American League East and, more importantly, a tie for the second wild card with plenty of reinforcements coming in the next couple of weeks.