How about those Jays? Win streak has club eyeing division lead

Toronto Blue Jays catcher Dioner Navarro (30) congratulates Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Roberto Osuna (54) on getting the save after the ninth inning of the game at Yankee Stadium. “From day one, I think everyone was excited to have a guy that just goes out there and do what he does”. And baseball being baseball, there’s no guarantee they even reach the postseason with their current wealth of talent.

“You never assume that it’s going to be easy”, manager Joe Girardi said in his postgame press conference.

Surprisingly, the Yankees are a tough opponent for Toronto considerably speaking. The result of these games will inevitably determine who wins the division, and although the teams are trending in opposite directions at the moment (the Yankees are 4-6 in their last 10 games), there is still plenty of season left.

In the middle of the pack sit the Rays but after a strong 4-2 record the team could be playing themselves back into one of the two wild card positions. He went 6 for 11 with two home runs and five RBIs to help the A’s win the last three of a four-game series against division-leading Houston. The Blue Jays, bolstered by new talent acquired at the trade deadline, swept the first-place Yankees.

Despite New York scoring 28 runs in their four previous game coming into this series, Estrada again kept their bats quiet and looked in command of his fastball all game. Tulowitzki, Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson and Edwin Encarnacion have combined for 17 home runs, more than 24 of the other 29 teams in baseball during that time. When we go to Cleveland, we go from there.

I still feel the same, but a appearance on a colleague’s radio show yesterday calmed me down a bit.

However, the upcoming three-game series against the Oakland Athletics seems like a bargain with the highest infield level seating price topping at $2,927 on Thursday. “And we didn’t win a game”.

The Blue Jays, meanwhile, look like a sudden juggernaut.

The Yankees are reeling and slipping, while the Blue Jays are steamrolling.

The point: The Yankees are about as streaky as it gets, but are often better than they are bad. And those Yankees, who just a few weeks ago had a commanding seven-game lead in the AL East, now lead by just 1.5 games, their smallest lead since July 7.

Rodriguez, who has become the team’s elder statesman, called for patience.

“There’s no time to panic for us”.

“I’m very comfortable with what we have here”, Cashman said. They’re still in first place, though it is by a smaller margin now. “We like our team; we trust our team”.

On an aggravating afternoon for the Yankees, Brett Gardner slammed down his helmet with two hands after grounding out with a runner on second to end the third inning.

Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki hit his third home run with the Blue Jays, driving a 3-and-2 pitch from reliever Bryan Mitchell into the left field seats with two out in the seventh. The two incidents prompted Teixeira to deliver a memorable one-liner in response. He said, “We need to tell the fans, ‘You can insult, but you cannot assault”.

Just to give you an idea, the same infield level ticket prices range between $60 to $70 for a game against the same Yankees on Monday, September 21.