When you’re playing a team with a loaded offense, you have to be doubly sure not to give up outs and force your pitcher to make extra pitches. Defense and discipline have to be on point, and today for the Toronto Blue Jays, they weren’t. The AL East matchup went to the Yankees for their 15th Grapefruit League victory, 13-6.
The Yankees piled seven extra base hits onto Toronto’s staff. They also caused three errors and forced extra work on their opponent’s cadre of pitchers. After trading blows early in the game - both teams hit two-run home runs in the first inning - the Yankees got out in front for good in the seventh inning.
With the Opening Day roster all but finalized, there were no real informative takeaways from today’s game. To boot, the players having good springs - Austin Romine, Didi Gregorius and Estevan Florial - had strong games, while players struggling through camp had subpar performances. Brett Gardner went 0-for-3 and Jacoby Ellsbury 0-for-2 to bring his spring OPS down to .259.
Unfortunately, with no TV broadcast, we were all robbed of what would have been a glorious sight: another Giancarlo Stanton bomb. Records of the blast from Twitter will have to suffice, at least until the regular season starts.
Giancarlo Stanton goes big fly off the scoreboard. His second in a Yankees uniform. Man, he crushed that.
— Bryan Hoch (@BryanHoch) March 24, 2018
Perhaps the biggest positive from today was Miguel Andujar drawing three walks. The biggest hole in Andujar’s offensive game is his aggression, with the third baseman never posting a walk rate above 7.2% in his time with the Yankee organization. Even with how good of a spring Andujar has had, he only boasts a .306 OBP, roughly around what Didi Gregorius historically posts.
It’s difficult to extrapolate anything out of a single game, much less a single pretend game, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Yankees have been preaching plate discipline to Andujar to work on moving forward. Hopefully today is indicative of a future trend for the prospect.
The Yankees are in the home stretch of spring, with their second-to-last game tomorrow against the Rays. This game will be televised, on Fox Sports Sun, and you can see it at 1:05pm EDT.