NEW YORK – The Blue Jays opened up a four-game series against the Yankees by being beaten, for the most part, by the long ball. After winning Mark Buehrle’s first three starts, the Jays have now dropped his last two and they’re back to five games under .500 for the season.
Here are three things that stood out to me about Thursday night’s loss:
KEEP THE TENSION ON – The Blue Jays got off to a terrific start offensively, perhaps riding the momentum of their sweep-avoiding victory in Baltimore, but they couldn’t sustain it.
Six of the first eleven Blue Jays to come to the plate picked up hits, including a double and two home runs, but the way they were spaced out — and with a double play thrown in there — they only scored three times. The sixth hit was a two-out double by Munenori Kawasaki in the top of the second inning, and it was the last hit the Blue Jays would get, save for an infield single by Brett Lawrie in the seventh.
They got out of the game plan that had them raking Hiroki Kuroda in the early-going and allowed him to settle in and dictate the at-bats from that point on, and Joba Chamberlain, David Robertson and Mariano Rivera came out of the Yankees’ bullpen and shut the Blue Jays down over the final three innings.
This shouldn’t need to be said, but you usually need to get some hits after the second inning in order to win a ball game.
THE BABIP MONSTER STRIKES AGAIN – Buehrle deserved better in his last start against the Yankees, as his defence let him down. This time, the big swing of the game had nothing to do with the Blue Jays’ glovemen — it was a huge three-run homer by Robinson Cano with two out in the third that turned a two-run Jays lead into a one-run deficit.
The two runners that big blast chauffeured home though, well, that’s where the BABIP Monster bit — or as R.A. Dickey might say, where Buehrle got baseball’d.
Jayson Nix hit a one-out ground ball into the hole between third and short. Munenori Kawasaki went hard to his right and made a nice play to pick it up, fired, and Nix beat it out. Two batters later, Brett Gardner’s chopper up the middle went off the glove of a diving Maicer Izturis, and he had himself an infield hit as well.
Cano certainly was full measure for the three-run shot — it was no Yankee Stadium special — but with a little bit better luck, it would have been a solo shot.
ROBOT UMPIRES NOW, PLEASE – It didn’t have an effect on the final score, but first-base umpire Chad Fairchild was overruled by his crew chief, second base umpire Jeff Kellogg, on a safe call at first in the seventh inning.
With Gardner on first and one out, Ben Francisco dropped a bunt down towards third that Brett Lawrie charged, grabbed and fired to first. The throw was low, but it was picked by Edwin Encarnacion. Whether the throw beat the runner wasn’t relevant, and replays to that end were inconclusive, and Fairchild ruled that Encarnacion caught the ball cleanly.
The Yankees didn’t argue, but Kellogg gathered his crew anyway to discuss whether or not Edwin pinned the ball against the ground to keep it in his glove. The guy who was standing right there didn’t think so, but the other three umpires did, so the call was reversed.
It looked to me that it was a clean catch, that Encarnacion sno-coned the ball and that he had complete control of it the entire way. Of course, I not only saw it live, but had the opportunity to look at a couple of replays, something that the umpires aren’t allowed to do.
It continues to baffle me how Major League Baseball can keep its collective head buried in the sand with regards to instant replay. The technology has been available for decades, it continues to improve year after year, and there’s no reason not to get every call as correct as possible.
The human element of the game is a wonderful thing, but it’s the human element of the performers, not the arbiters. The fact that an umpire is human shouldn’t make a player safe when he’s out, or vice-versa, and as for argument that using replay would waste too much time and slow the game down, well, I saw John Gibbons take up a whole lot of time arguing the reversal of the call with Kellogg and his crew.
There’s no earthly reason why a fifth umpire can’t sit up in a booth in the press box, take a second look at every call on the field and buzz down to change one if it’s wrong. The entire process should take less than a minute, which is about how long it takes for Yankees Robinson Cano and Kevin Youkilis, among others, to settle into the batters’ box between pitches. Balls and strikes are a whole different animal, but one would imagine there’s a way to put a system in similar to tennis’ Cyclops.
It’s long past time for baseball to fix this. We have it within our grasp to get nearly every call right, and for some reason, it’s still not happening.