TORONTO — Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s back started tightening up before Friday’s 8-5 win over the New York Yankees, so he told John Schneider. The manager instructed him to be careful and the all-star first baseman managed to get through the night, with an RBI double to his credit.
Afterwards, though, Schneider checked in and asked, “with how you're feeling right now, what do you think, do you want to wait to (Saturday) or do you want a day? You've totally earned a day off,” he recalled. “He's like, ‘Yeah, that's good.’”
Good thing, too, as Saturday morning, Guerrero’s back hadn’t gotten better and he wasn’t sure about the severity of what he was dealing with. Asked if he was worried about the tightness, he said yes and no, as only one thing was certain: “It hurts."
No Guerrero, then, for the Toronto Blue Jays in their latest clash with Cam Schlittler, who noted the way they managed, and we’ll paraphrase here, to BABIP the poop out of him last month, and this week took aim at the team’s fans, describing them as “easy to rage-bait.”
A crowd of 42,364 didn’t bite on a gorgeous afternoon, and after Schlittler and Kevin Gausman duelled to a 1-1 draw through seven innings, the Yankees found the decisive blow in the ninth inning, when Paul Goldschmidt hit a two-run homer off Louis Varland – the first allowed by the closer this season – for a 3-1 win.
The Blue Jays had more than their share of chances, going 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position, their only hit being Charles McAdoo’s infield single that loaded the bases with two outs in the second, before Andres Gimenez grounded out to end the threat.
“Just didn't get the big hit,” Schneider lamented.
The Blue Jays had men on second and third with one out in the fourth but McAdoo’s liner with the infield in was snared by a diving Jazz Chisholm Jr. before Gimenez struck out.
In the eighth, Kazuma Okamoto – who took Schlittler deep in the third to open the scoring – and Jesus Sanchez walked to open the inning off Fernando Cruz, but Ernie Clement popped up a sacrifice bunt attempt, Brandon Valenzuela struck out and after a Yohendrick Pinango walk, McAdoo popped out to end the jam.
The rare Varland blip followed in the top of the ninth and David Bednar handled the bottom half to drop the Blue Jays to 34-37.
The decision to bunt with Clement in the eighth, Schneider explained, was made because “Ernie's good at it and obviously like the way Valley's swinging the bat. You want to put pressure on Cruz to throw strikes. He threw (eight) strikes (out of 24 pitches), so you want to try to force the issue there and get a guy up who's been swinging the bat. Ernie usually gets that down, but didn't get it down today and still ended up with chances to score.”
And while Guerrero was unavailable, Schneider said he considered hitting Kirk for McAdoo later in the inning but liked the rookie’s “feel for the strike zone.”
“I know he's young,” he added, “but conversations behind the scenes about what pitch to swing at, he got a heater, it was up, out of the zone a little bit, but trusted him to command the zone and we're a little limited on the bench.”
The disappointing end squandered perhaps Gausman’s best outing of the season, as he allowed just a single hit over his seven dominant innings, a Jasson Dominguez solo shot in the fourth, on a splitter he left over the middle of the plate.
Otherwise, he was nails in getting through seven frames for the first time this season while reaching a season-high 105 pitches, just the second time this year he’s hit a triple-digit pitch count.
An adjustment between outings to better place his finger with “aggressive” grip pressure on his splitter paid off in a big way as the Yankees missed on 15 of 26 swings, an astonishing 58 per cent, against the pitch.
“My split's been cutting,” said Gausman. “I’ve been throwing a lot of splits that I've been getting away with and luckily I haven't gotten beat by many. I expect that pitch to be my bread and butter. So I needed to figure it out and today was definitely a step in the right direction.”
Schneider called the performance “about as good as you get” while Yankees manager Aaron Boone was full of praise, too.
“Gausman was great,” he said. “Obviously we’ve seen Gausman, we’ve seen a lot of great performances, we’ve had some success along the way. But I thought he was really, really good.”
Schlittler, meanwhile, had traffic to navigate just like in his three previous regular-season starts and one post-season outing against the Blue Jays, when he allowed 28 hits over 19 innings.
None of them were homers until Okamoto’s drive in the third, on a 98.4 m.p.h. sinker out of the zone up and in lined just over the wall in the left-field corner. The sinker was in the same spot as the one he struck out on in the first inning, demonstrating an ability to adjust, but that turned out to be the only damage they managed.
“We have a pretty contact-oriented team and I think that's how you have to combat him because it's three different fastballs between 95 and 100,” Schneider said before the game. “It's a tough assignment, but you have to stick with it and that's usually the best way to beat him. He doesn't give up a lot of damage because the stuff is so good, so you've got to try to paper-cut him to death almost. We have guys that can do that.”
On this day, Guerrero wasn’t able to be among them, with uncertainty about his status for the series finale when Patrick Corbin goes against Will Warren.
“I’m hoping (Sunday) will be better,” said Schneider. “He was still sore and then it's the toss-up between getting fired up today and go have an at-bat or let it calm down and try to be in there (Sunday) with the off-day Monday. He's way too valuable to lose and we'll know more later.”
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