Struggling Manoah lacks control as Blue Jays drop opener to Yankees

TORONTO – A perfect summation of the current disparity between the American League East and other divisions in the majors came during ESPN’s weekly Sunday night broadcast this week. In the score bug, beneath the acronyms for each team, was their record and where they stood in the standings. The St. Louis Cardinals were 15-25, eight games back in the NL Central, before their 9-1 win, while the Boston Red Sox were 22-18, also eight games back, in the AL East.

Crazy.

“It’s a strong division and always has been,” Toronto Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins said Monday, before his team opened a four-game series against the New York Yankees with a 7-4 loss behind another rough Alek Manoah outing. “The balanced aspect of it makes it unique or different from how it’s been in the past.”

Very much so and it’s an early-season trend to watch during the more balanced schedule’s debut season, with the number of clashes against each divisional rival down to 14 games from the previous 19. While in part, that means AL East clubs won’t beat up on each other as often as they have in the past, “there’s also the downside of those teams getting opportunities to win more games against lesser opponents where we're not, quote unquote, cannibalizing one another,” said Atkins. “The challenges are different.”

Among them is that with less head-to-head games, there are fewer opportunities to directly impact the standings against one another, adding leverage to each contest. This series between the Blue Jays and Yankees is their second meeting of the season and they won’t see one another again until September, when they play six times in their final 12 games.

In the meantime, the AL East is once again shaping as baseball’s toughest meat-grinder and you can project out a pathway to it becoming the sport’s first to finish with every team at .500 or better. Yankees manager Aaron Boone wasn’t ready to delve into what it all means just yet – “you play what's in front of you and we're coming off a big four-game series where we had the Rays in town, now we play the Jays for four, those are going to be as competitive as you can want,” he said – but made clear there’s no use in complaining about circumstance.

“Ultimately, if you're going to be a really good team in the league, the 162 separates,” he said later. “What we talk about around here is I want you to walk in with an edge, prepare your butt off and then go compete. Rinse and repeat. That's our job, to make sure we're holding each other to that standard.”

The same applies across the diamond, where the Yankees (24-19) closed within a game of the Blue Jays (24-17) in the AL East standings Monday by grinding out Manoah for five runs on six hits – including one of Aaron Judge’s two homers and a Willie Calhoun two-run shot – and a ghastly, career-high seven walks.

Both those homers came in the first, burying the Blue Jays 3-0 right out the gate, the Yankees tacked on two more in the fourth and Manoah walked two to open the fifth before he was pulled, and rather than turning the corner on his recent struggles, he u-turned right back into them before a crowd of 28,810.

Manoah was pleased with his slider, which generated three whiffs on eight swings after none in his last two outings, and his sinker, which got four misses on 14 swings, but added the obvious in saying he needs to be in the zone more.

“Right now the game is just testing me and you find out who's who when things aren't going well,” said Manoah, who later said his routine work between starts remains strong. “When things aren't going good you can try and change everything and then you kind of lose who you are. So I'm definitely not going to be doing that. I think it's just continue to adjust and continue to watch video and kind of just make minor adjustments.”

The Blue Jays fell behind 7-0 in the eighth inning when Judge hit his second solo shot of the game but clawed their way back into the game in the bottom half, getting an RBI single from Whit Merrifield, a run-scoring fielder’s choice by George Springer, a run-scoring single by Bo Bichette and RBI double by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to pull within three. Michael King, the third Yankees pitcher of the inning, stopped the rally by getting Daulton Varsho to groundout and then locked things down in the ninth.

An interesting observation picked up by Dan Shulman and Buck Martinez on the Sportsnet broadcast of the game was that Judge twice during his at-bat in the eighth glanced to his right before an incoming pitch. The second time, he took Jay Jackson deep.

Given that the shadow of the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal still looms over the sport, anything unusual immediately raises eyebrows. Another interesting twist for a division full of intrigue.