TORONTO – More important for the Toronto Blue Jays than apportioning blame for the extra-curricular activities Monday night is what the fallout will be from their brawl with the New York Yankees. Joaquin Benoit needed the support of pitching coach Pete Walker to limp off the field after the ruckus, and later left the stadium on crutches. Devon Travis didn’t take the field for the sixth inning with an issue in the left shoulder twice surgically repaired last year. Some form of supplementary discipline is certain.
All of that could prove very, very costly, especially with the Baltimore Orioles arriving for a three-game series that can make or break the wild-card aspirations of both clubs.
So the potential unifying benefits of the Blue Jays’ second brawl of the season – let there be no doubt that Josh Donaldson the rest of the lineup knows just how much J.A. Happ has their back now – must be weighed against the repercussions. First and foremost among those is a crazy town 7-5 loss to the Yankees, who averted a four-game sweep by tying the game in the ninth on a fully-pimped Mark Teixeira homer off Jason Grilli before Aaron Hicks added a two-run homer, stunning a crowd of 44,532.
The Blue Jays nearly came all the way back in the bottom of the ninth but their rally fell short, and the defeat stung all the more since it left them just one game up on the Orioles ahead of Tuesday’s opener, when Aaron Sanchez starts against Kevin Gausman.
So really, very little good came out of this one.
"I don’t even know what the baseball rules are anymore. Who does? People just go and do whatever they want to do," said Donaldson, adding later: "I don’t know what their agenda was. I can’t speak for the other team, I can’t speak for what they’re doing. I know the guy’s throwing 100. It’s not good when balls are coming at you."
The guy throwing 100 was Luis Severino, who started the ill will in the first when Donaldson got hit on the left elbow. Though he promptly took his elbow pad off and scooted to first – eventually scoring on Russell Martin’s bases loaded walk – a closer look at Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez on replay showed him twice looking up at Donaldson before pointing way inside with his index finger before the pitch.
"Some teams have been taking pot shots at us all year long and some guys just got tired of it is what I think happened," said manager John Gibbons. "I thought the umpires handled it the right way and then we’d move on from there, but we’ve got some pretty good hitters in that lineup and you don’t like seeing them get hit, that’s for sure."
Whether or not there was intent on the pitch, Happ seemed to treat the pitch like it was intentional, throwing at and missing Chase Headley with his first pitch of the second before catching him on the left buttocks with his second.
"You’re taking into account everything that goes on in the game," said Happ. "I wasn’t trying to hit Chase but it happened. They can say whatever they want to say, eventually cooler heads prevailed, but it took a minute there."
As home plate umpire Todd Tichenor issued warnings to both dugouts, Yankees manager Joe Girardi came charging out of the dugout, followed closely by CC Sabathia, who was spitting fire. Gary Sanchez looked ready to go, too, but nothing developed beyond some shouting and finger-pointing.
"They came out on the field the first time," said Donaldson. "I was getting in front of Happ because I didn’t want anything to happen to him."
Said Sabathia: "Just a natural reaction. I’m sticking up for my guys."
Not content to leave things there, Severino opened the bottom of the second by firing his first pitch at Justin Smoak’s midsection, just missing. Tichenor reacted like he might chuck Severino but then held his ground, which turned out to be a major mistake, as the right-hander used his next pitch to hit Smoak in the right thigh.
Then it was time to rumble.
"You would think after the first pitch they threw at me, they had warned both teams, that he would automatically been gone but he wasn’t," said Smoak. "For them, it’s a bullpen day so (Severino’s ejection) didn’t hurt them much, you know what I mean? He’s going to throw one more inning anyway, so it doesn’t really matter."
Kevin Pillar and Travis were the first Blue Jays out while Smoak ripped off his helmet and went looking for Severino. A mass of bodies converged, Smoak grabbed Yankees infielder Tyler Austin and got him with a punch before Brian McCann bear-hugged him. Sabathia and Donaldson had a heated exchange while Martin and Sanchez tried to get after each other.
Austin emerged from the scrum with a scrape under his left eye. Severino, Girardi, Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild and bench coach Rob Thomson all were ejected. No one from the Blue Jays got tossed.
"That’s kind of the unwritten rules of baseball – you hit one of our guys, our MVP guy, after that sometimes the ball slips out of the pitcher’s hand, and for some reason it’s even," said Martin. "That’s kind of how the game goes."
During the scrum Benoit, who was seen holding back Sabathia at certain points, hurt his calf. Gibbons suggested it might be similar to the torn calf muscle suffered by Brett Cecil during the post-season last year. The Blue Jays said medical updates will be issued on both Benoit and Travis on Tuesday.
"When Smoak got hit we were out there like a swarm of bees," said Donaldson. "I tried to go out there and get everybody away from each other because we have some important games left, we don’t need to lose anybody and that’s just the nature of the beast. Try to go out there and separate it."
All that remained after that was baseball, and the Blue Jays took a 3-1 lead in the third when Troy Tulowitzki pounded an RBI double off the wall in left-centre and Michael Saunders added an RBI single.
Things stayed there until the eighth, when Brett Gardner hit a one-out double and scored on a single to centre by Jacoby Ellsbury, who took second when Pillar bobbled the ball. With Roberto Osuna unavailable and Jason Grilli being saved for the ninth, Joe Biagini came on and got Sanchez on a fly ball to right before Brett Cecil induced a weak grounder from pinch-hitter McCann to end the frame.
Grilli, however, couldn’t close things out, as after a Headley smash to first was fielded nicely by Smoak for the out, Teixeira ambushed a first pitch pipe shot and crushed it into the second deck. He stood and watched it, flipped his bat so high Yasiel Puig would blush and then slow-trotted it around the bases, catching some grief from Grilli.
Once he got into the dugout, he turned to the field and appeared to yell, "blown save." The Yankees kept coming after that, tacking on four more runs, padding they needed.
"I was just letting him know that he blew the save. We were just having fun," said Teixeira, quipping later: "We’re all entertainers, aren’t we?"
The Blue Jays nearly pulled it out against Dellin Betances in the bottom of the ninth, as they loaded the bases with none out and after Donaldson flew out to right off Tommy Layne, Edwin Encarnacion’s bases-loaded walk and Dioner Navarro’s bloop single cut the deficit to two. But Layne rallied to get a fielder’s choice on Martin’s little roller to the mound, diving to touch the plate for a force out, before Troy Tulowitzki’s drive to left was chased down by a sliding Brett Gardner.
"I came up in a pretty big spot there, bases loaded, missed a couple of pretty good pitches to hit, wish I could get those back but that’s part of it. Sometimes they’re able to escape the jams," said Donaldson. "We’ve had a lot of emotional games this year, we’ve just got to bounce back and go to the next one. I have confidence in our team that we’re going to be able to do that."
With a heavy cost from this one to come, and the Blue Jays’ biggest series of the season due to begin, they don’t have any time to waste.
