Blue Jays Win Season Opener in Extra Innings

The Blue Jays are now undefeated to start the 2021 season, albeit just one game has been played so far.  It took extra innings, but Toronto came on top over the New York Yankees in 10 innings on Thursday afternoon by a score of 3-2.

The game opened up with Hyun Jin Ryu starting against the fireball throwing Gerrit Cole.  Both pitched almost identical lines, as they each threw 5.1 innings, allowing two earned runs and one home run.  The small difference was Cole allowed one more hit and walk, while striking out eight to Ryu’s five.

The Blue Jays opened up the scoring in the top of the second inning when Teoscar Hernandez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr and Lourdes Gurriel Jr put together three consecutive singles with the last one driving in Hernandez.  The Yankees would respond in the bottom of the second when Gary Sanchez hit a ball that cleared the left field fence for a two-run shot.  Cole appeared to settle in after that, but with one out in the top of sixth inning Hernandez absolutely crushed a ball deep into the left fielder bleachers which marked the end of Cole’s day after throwing 97 pitches.

Ryu would come out for the bottom of the sixth inning, but as we have seen before Charlie Montoyo does not like to see pitchers throw more than 90-pitches and removed Ryu after one out in the inning.  It should be noted that in 2020, even as the ace of the staff Ryu only averaged 94 pitches per outing and only threw more than 94 six times.  It is the first game of the season so that likely played a part in the decision, I would have just liked to see if he could get through another batter or two.

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The game remained tied going into the bottom of the ninth when the seven through nine hitters were coming up for the Yankees.  Montoyo elected to go with Jordan Romano, which turned out to be a high stressed inning for many fans.  After Gary Sanchez walked to start the inning, he was replaced by Mike Tauchman to run the bases.  Romano failed to change up his delivery and Tauchman was able to get good jumps off him and stole both second and third.  The defense would come up big as Cavan Biggio threw out Tauchman at the plate later in the inning, which Romano followed that up by striking out Aaron Judge to get out of trouble.

To start the tenth inning a rule that was brought into play last year had the final out from the previous inning start at second base.  As Rowdy Tellez was the final out, Montoyo replaced him with Jonathan Davis as a pinch runner.  A couple pitches later and Randal Grichuk collected his second hit of the game, this time a line drive double over Judge’s head to score Davis.

Julian Merryweather came into the game in an attempt to shut down the Yankees and looked nothing shy of brilliant as he struck out all three batters to end the game.  Merryweather collected his first career save and each of the batters looked confused and overmatched by the 29 year old.

Player of the Game: Julian Merryweather as he came into the game in a save situation with a runner on second base and struck out Aaron Hicks, Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres.

1IP | 0H | 0ER | 0BB | 3K | Save (1)

The Blue Jays will have Friday off, before the two teams get back at it on Saturday afternoon with Ross Stripling taking on Corey Kluber.