Blue Jays takeaways: Yankees tee off on Ray to end run of solid performances

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This article was published 27/05/2021 (1783 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 5-3 loss to the Yankees in Game 2 of Thursday’s doubleheader:

Rookie Alek Manoah set the bar high with his Game 1 performance for the Blue Jays, and lefty Robbie Ray couldn’t come close to matching his new teammate, getting knocked around in the nightcap.

For the first time this season, Ray gave up as many as five runs in a start. The big blows were loud home runs by Aaron Judge, a two-run homer on a 3-0 pitch, and Gary Sanchez, a solo shot.

Ray faced 21 hitters over his 4 2/3 innings of work, walking two and striking out five, which means he allowed 14 hitters to make contact. Of those 14, nine hit the ball over 95 miles per hour off the bat.

Ray walked a pair of Yankees, snapping a streak of six straight starts in which last year’s major-league walks leader had issued no more than one free pass. His new-found control may have worked against him, though, with opposing hitters in attack mode, knowing that he would be around the plate. He hasn’t really had to worry about that in the past, but it’s something the southpaw will have to adjust to now that he’s not walking people anymore.

Ray also snapped a streak of five straight outings in which the Jays’ starter (including Ross Stripling, who worked behind an opener on Monday) had worked at least six innings. Over that span, the five starters (Ray, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Stripling, Steven Matz and Manoah) had combined to post a sparkling ERA of 1.08.

• Gurriel to Bichette to Jansen: Twice in Thursday’s nightcap, the Yankees tried to score a runner from first on a double to left, and twice the Jays were having none of it.

With two on and one out in the first inning, former Jay Giovanny Urshela hit a line drive over the head of Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who played it perfectly off the wall and hit cut-off man Bo Bichette, who turned and sent a beautiful relay home in plenty of time for Danny Jansen to put the tag on Judge, the trailing runner. It was Gurriel’s fifth outfield assist of the season.

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In the sixth inning, with two out and the slow-footed Sanchez on first, rookie Estevan Florial lashed a double into the gap and, again, Gurriel played it beautifully off the wall. This time, the left fielder got the ball to Bichette just as Sanchez was hitting third base. Bichette threw another strike to Jansen and Sanchez was out by 30 feet.

Six outfield assists for Gurriel, just 49 games into the season, puts him two-thirds of the way to his 2019 career-high of nine.

• Big day for Bo: Bichette met with the media prior to Wednesday’s rainout, and talked about not feeling terribly comfortable at the plate, but working hard to get back on track. Maybe the weather-related time off helped, because Bichette hit a home run in each game of Thursday’s doubleheader.

His 10th of the season came in the third inning of the opener, a 374-foot home run down the left-field line. The long-locked shortstop really got into one in the nightcap, also in the third inning, blasting a three-run shot 410 feet into the Jays’ bullpen, giving his team a brief lead.

No Jay had homered in both ends of a doubleheader against the Yankees since their inaugural season, when Ron Fairly did it at Exhibition Stadium. The first all-star in club history hit a three-run shot off Ken Clay in the opener, helping power the expansion Jays to an 8-5 win over the eventual World Series champions, and smacked a solo shot in the nightcap off Ken Holtzman, the only Toronto run in a 5-1 loss.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness