The Yanks continued their downward spiral with their 4th straight loss, falling to 21-21 after a 16-6 start to the year. This time they wasted a terrific start by J.A. Happ, who pitched into the 7th with 10 strikeouts and only 4 hits allowed — but one of the hits was a 2-run homer to rightfielder Jonathan Davis in the 2nd and the Yankee offense could only manage 1 run, for the 2-1 loss.
Happ's 9th strikeout on the night. 🔥 🔥 🔥 pic.twitter.com/UccIRPRMjB
— YES Network (@YESNetwork) September 9, 2020
Yanks Infuriate Twitter By Leaving Runners On
The Yankees stranded a number of runners in the first few innings — leaving the bases loaded in the 1st inning against Toronto starter Taijuan Walker, who walked 5 in 4 innings. But Walker was able to get out of the jam spots. In that 1st for example, after getting the first 2 outs, Walker walked 3 straight batters to load the bases. Mike Tauchman worked the count to 3-1 against the wild Walker, but swung on the 3-1 pitch and popped it up to left. The Yanks had 10 Runners Left On Base (LOB) overall — Toronto by comparison had 3 LOB.
Andujar = Hot. But Batting 8th?
Mike Tauchman drove in a run with a sac fly in the 5th. Miguel Andujar continued his torrid hitting — going 2 for 4 — but was placed 8th in the batting order by manager Aaron Boone for some reason, as NXT Bay Bay pointed out on Twitter. Andujar got 3 hits Sunday and hit a homer Monday, and you could make an extremely strong argument he should have been batting higher than Gleyber Torres (batting 5th) and Mike Tauchman (batting 6th), who have been ice cold.
DJ LeMahieu, Luke Voit, and Aaron Hicks each got a hit at the top of the lineup. Clint Frazier went 0-2 with 2 walks. Batting Andujar 5th might have made a difference in this game.
Gary Sanchez played for the first time after a 3-game rest due to hitting so badly, batted 7th and went 0-4 to lower his average to .125. At least he only struck out once. Boone may have put Andujar 8th to put a hot bat behind Sanchez to act as protection, but that is an arguable strategy as teams don’t seem to be pitching carefully to Sanchez.
The Boxscore
https://www.espn.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=401226316
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