New York Yankees vs. Toronto Blue Jays: Series Preview

In a series massively altered by rain, the Yankees took two out of three against the Rangers, despite some bad 2021 habits creeping up. Even with the two wins, the Yankees scored just five runs in total in the three games, with the victories coming by scores of 2-1 and 1-0. What had been different so far in 2022 was that the offense has been putting up some big final totals, while even in the long win streak in ‘21, plenty of those games were low-scoring.

Now the schedule calls for another matchup against the Blue Jays, as Toronto is coming to the Bronx for a quick two-game set. The Yankees will need to put the offensive struggles from the Texas series behind them as they face off against a team they’ll likely be battling with for the division/playoff spots down the stretch of this season.

Tuesday: Luis Severino vs. Yusei Kikuchi (7:05 PM ET)

The rainouts over the weekend have led the Yankees into changing the rotation order for the first time this season. Severino will get the ball in the opener, having originally been scheduled to start back during the Texas series. Considering how much time he’s missed over the past couple seasons and wanting to control his innings, the Yankees took the opportunity to sneak him a few extra days and held him off until tonight’s series opener. With the benefit of a couple more days rest, he’ll be looking to bounce back from his worst start of the season so far. Against the Royals, he went just five innings, allowing three earned runs and four in total. His 3.75 ERA doesn’t seem too bad on the surface, but he is technically the only Yankee starter currently worse than league average (97 ERA+).

Kikuchi was partially responsible for snapping the Yankees 11-game wins streak last week in Toronto when he held them to one run in six innings, while striking out seven. Not long after that outing, the Bombers’ will get a chance at some revenge in the opener. Despite what happened last time, over Kikuchi’s MLB career, the Yankees have mostly gone back and forth between getting held down by him or knocking him around, so hopefully that trend will continue.

Wednesday: Jameson Taillon vs. José Berríos (12:35 PM ET)

Just to make note of it, the second in the two game set has a bit of an unusual start time even for a weekday, getaway day game.

For it, the Yankees will give the ball to Taillon, who’s been good so far this season and is coming off his best start of the season, which came against this exact Blue Jays team. Last Tuesday, he threw six innings of one-run ball, allowing five hits and no walks. Add in a two-run outing against the Jays in his 2022 season debut and Taillon has a 2.45 ERA against Toronto so far this year.

Berríos hasn’t been stellar so far this season, coming in with a 5.34 ERA. He had been trending in a better direction, but last time out, the Guardians got him for six runs in 4.2 innings. In his only meeting with the Yankees so far this year, he went five innings, giving up three runs.