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During his last start, Sonny Gray was knocked around by the Red Sox and gave up six earned runs over three innings. He worked on making some mechanical adjustments over the past week, but we didn’t see any improvement tonight. The offense gave him a two-run lead to work with—twice—but neither lasted longer than half an inning. Toronto finally took the lead in the fifth inning and never looked back. This one can be chalked up to yet another frustrating loss for the Yankees.
Marco Estrada has historically pitched well against the Yankees, but they were able to get to him tonight. He walked Aaron Hicks in the second inning, and Tyler Austin launched a two-run shot to put the Yankees on the board. Toronto immediately tied things up after Gray walked Curtis Granderson and Teoscar Hernandez hit his own two-run blast.
The Yankees pulled ahead once again thanks to a two-run bomb off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton. That was his fourth career home run off of Estrada, and hopefully a sign that he is heating up at the plate. Unfortunately, the Yankees’ lead was short-lived, once again.
Russell Martin started the fourth inning with a leadoff double, then Kendrys Morales followed with a fly ball to left field. The ball appeared to be going foul, but it hit the line and bounced into the stands for a ground-rule double. With one out, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. knocked in two runs to give Toronto the lead. Gray then issued a walk to Granderson, and that was enough to end his night. Through three and one-third innings, Gray walked four batters, gave up five runs, and didn’t notch a single strikeout. It wasn’t pretty.
Domingo German relieved Gray and walked Hernandez on four straight pitches to load the bases. He got Justin Smoak and Yangervis Solarte to fly out to escape the jam, but didn’t fare as well in the fifth. After Martin worked a leadoff walk, Morales singled, and Diaz walked to load the bases. Gurriel Jr. knocked in his third RBI of the game, then Hernandez walked to force in a run. It was a night of walks, as Gray and German walked a whopping eight batters between the two of them.
The Blue Jays scored their final run in the sixth after Yangervis Solarte launched a solo home run off of Adam Warren. He settled down after that and only gave up one other hit over two and two-thirds innings. Chasen Shreve closed out the game with a scoreless outing.
If you’re looking for positives, there were a few others. Miguel Andujar hit his second home run, the bottom half of the lineup had eight hits between them, and the Yankees didn’t make any errors. The latter has been a rarity this season. There has been a lot of talk about the Yankees not giving Gray run support, but that wasn’t the case tonight. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to keep them in the game. Something has to give.
Hopefully Jordan Montgomery will have better luck tomorrow. He’ll take the mound opposite of Marcus Stroman at 1:05 ET, and you can follow the game on YES.