Yankees Fan Throws Back Blue Jays Home Run Ball, Hits Brett Gardner

Three relievers combined on 2 2/3 scoreless innings and when Roberto Osuna recorded his 10th save in 11 opportunities, the Blue Jays had their ninth sweep of any series in New York but first since May 22-25, 2003, when Roy Halladay, Kelvim Escobar, Cory Lidle and Doug Davis were the winning pitchers. “I think they were probably saying I suck, I think”.

Three days later, they leave town as winners of eight straight, a mere 1 1/2 games back in the AL East, having embarrassed the Yankees with three thumping victories in a statement-making sweep.

The Jays’ Justin Smoak broke open a 0-0 deadlock between Price and Yankees starter Ivan Nova with a grand slam in the sixth.

Yes, the Yankees still hold first place. The Blue Jays are baseball’s best offense, with the Yankees not far behind. The Jays seem like the more likely team to make the playoffs this year and the reasoning is simple, the Yankees came out firing this season.

Gardner immediately flinched after he was struck in the fourth inning but stayed in the game without a problem. Not since May 1999 against the Angels had the Yankees been blanked in two straight – that stretch of 2,665 games between consecutive shutouts was the longest in major league history, the team said in citing research by the Elias Sports Bureau.

Tanaka (8-5) missed a lot of spots and it cost him twice, on solo homers to Josh Donaldson in the first and Jose Bautista in the fourth.

“You never assume that it’s going to be easy”, Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “We’ve got to play well when we go to Cleveland and go from there”.

“He just ran into me”.

Armed with a devastating changeup, Estrada has gone on to enjoy a career year, his victory on Sunday his 10th win of the season (against six losses), already three more than his previous single-season high.

“This isn’t going to be comfortable the rest of the way”, Teixeira said. We did just enough to win.

On Wednesday, they faced Boston’s Stephen Wright and then Friday, the Jays threw Dickey at them. “I’m all right, thank God”.

“Sure”, said Gardner, when asked if he could’ve been seriously injured, although he didn’t flinch or look back at the stands after he was beaned. At the outset of 2015 they were overly reliant on midfielder Pedro Morales and keeper David Ousted, and if the two stars had off nights, the team was in trouble. I feel like we can compete with anybody. “We just played good baseball”.

Leave for three weeks in Europe and the Blue Jays are one game under.500.

“You can’t win anything without a good bullpen”, said Gibbons.

Arrieta, who improved to a team-best 13-6, departed with two outs in the eighth after giving up an infield single to Matt Duffy. Their rotation at least has been performing fairly well of late – Severino, CC Sabathia, Nathan Eovaldi and Tanaka are all coming off solid starts – so perhaps that provides some reason for optimism.