New York Yankees<\/a>.<\/p>\nRice proceeded to foul off a fastball and curveball from Scherzer before sending the 10th\u00a0pitch of the at-bat, a four-seamer in the middle of the zone, over the right-field fence. The three-run shot left his bat at 109.4 m.p.h. and gave the Yankees the lead in the first inning of Sunday\u2019s game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The strategy and accompanying home run didn\u2019t stand as the game-winner \u2014 the Blue Jays tied the game before Scherzer eventually surrendered a third-inning double to Cody Bellinger that put the Yankees up for good \u2014 but it did offer a strong dose of gamesmanship in New York\u2019s 4-3 win over Toronto in front of 43,266 at Yankee Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays (82-61) dropped two of three over the weekend series and now sit just two games ahead of the Yankees (80-63) in the American League East. This marked the last time these clubs will meet in the regular season \u2014 the Blue Jays finished with an 8-5 record \u2014 however, a meeting in the playoffs is a real possibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not to put the cart before the horse, as Blue Jays manager John Schneider likes to say, but if the post-season began today, Toronto would receive a bye to the AL Division Series, where they would play winner of the wild-card matchup between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox.<\/p>\n
Should that happen, don\u2019t forget what happened with Scherzer. There\u2019s plenty of intrigue between these clubs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Yankees grinded out at-bats against Scherzer, pushing up his pitch count and making him work right from the eventful first inning. The right-hander allowed four runs on three hits and four walks over 4.1 innings, with eight strikeouts on 93 pitches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After Vladimir Guerrero Jr.\u2019s hard-hit double plated the tying run in the third inning, the Blue Jays put runners on second and third with none out. However, Yankees left-hander Max Fried kept the ball in the infield, retiring Alejandro Kirk \u2014 batting in Bichette\u2019s No. 4 spot \u2014 along with Ernie Clement and Ty France to escape further damage.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays again put two runners on in the eighth inning but failed to score against Yankees reliever Devin Williams.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Aaron Judge stood on second base with his arms outstretched, his massive wingspan hard to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-127457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}