Bautista burns Bombers

With a little help from the umpires, and two bombs from Jose Bautista, the Blue Jays took a 3-2 win in the opener of a three-game set with the Yanks north of the border.

Not only was Jerry Meals’ strike zone all over the place, but Mark Wegner’s botched call at first base on Yunel Escobar’s “single” pretty much cost the Yanks the game. The replays clearly showed Tex had his foot on the bag after catching the ball. Bautista followed with a home run and the Yanks lost by a run. The human element strikes again.

Shit I liked:

• Ivan Nova’s first big league start. It was a good one, he went 5 1/3 innings and gave up two runs on six hits with three strikeouts to one walk. He also retired nine straight batters before a Vernon Wells single in the sixth. Not bad against the MLB leaders in home runs.
• Nova throwing at Bautista’s head in the sixth inning. I don’t think it was intentional, I think the ball just got away from him because who would do that in their first ML start? However, what I liked was Nova not backing down when Bautista had a few words for him. The benches and bullpens emptied but no punches were thrown, though words were exchanged.
• Brett Gardner’s 10th outfield assist of the season. On a would-be Vernon Wells sac fly, with the bases loaded and no outs in the first, Gardy rocketed the ball home to get Fred Lewis at the plate and keep it scoreless. It’s been said that “You don’t run on Brett Gardner, Brett Gardner runs on you.”
• Cano recorded his 35th double, giving him his fifth straight season with at least 35 doubles. That’s the second most consecutive seasons with at least 35 doubles by a second baseman in MLB history.
• Boone Logan retiring 32 of the last 38 batters he’s faced.

Shit I did not care for:

• Brett Gardner has now struck out 20 times this month.
• Swish Dog has struck out 24 times this month.
• Cervelli is now 0 for his last 14 while hitting .239 for the year.
• D-Rob giving up his first run since July 2 (18 2/3 innings).
• Jose Bautista notched his 40th homer of the year, and now has 50 HRs in his last 149 games dating back to last season (he had 13 all of last year and a career high of 16…just saying). On his second homer he took his sweet time rounding the bases (28.74 seconds which is the 12th slowest of the year, h/t @wezen_ball) and grilled D-Rob and taunted Cervelli en route to the dugout. Obviously it was because of the Nova incident, but it was uncalled for. Have fun in the playoffs, Jose.
• Bautista became the seventh different player to hit 40 homers for the Blue Jays (George Bell, Jose Canseco, Carlos Delgado did it three times, Shawn Green, Bautista and Jesse Barfield).
• Brandon Morrow’s 12 strikeouts were the most by a pitcher against the Yanks this season and the most by any pitcher since AJ Burnett (also with Toronto) fanned 13 Yanks on August 19, 2008. Eduardo Nunez was the only Yankee not to whiff against Morrow.
• Girardi pulling Nova in the sixth when he was only at 73 pitches. The bullpen did its job for the most part, but why not let the kid go a little longer?
• Ramiro Pena getting doubled off at first on a hit-and-run when he was damn near at third.
• In addition to the aforementioned bull shit strike zone, look at Grandy’s strike zone during his ninth-inning at bat. That’s a joke.

Post-game quotes:

Nova on pitch that almost hit Bautista:

"It wasn’t on purpose. I was surprised, I didn’t want to hit him. I didn’t hear anything from him, I didn’t hear what he said."

Nova on if he’s earned another start:

"I got a ways to go before they make a decision."

Bautista on his home runs:

"Obviously it’s something that I didn’t expect. I try to go out and produce for this team…I didn’t know I’d be able to hit this many home runs this quickly."

Bautista on the donnybrook:

"I’ve never had anybody do that to me in my career, rookie or veteran. To me it was a little uncalled for, just because of his reaction after I got up from the ground. I was just looking at him to see what kind of attitude he was going to have. He was very defining, he started walking up to me and screaming at me before I even did anything. I don’t know what his reasons were, but I dealt with it for the rest of the game and we came out on top."

The Yanks got Moseley going tomorrow night against Marc Rzepczynski. LET’S GO YANKS!!!!!!