Jays 6 - Yankees 5

Monday, September 19 2005 @ 08:45 AM EDT

A close victory against one of the seasons toughest oppenents.

The Yankees may not have played like a $200 million team for much of this year, but they have against the Jays. The season record now stands as played 15 won 5 for the good guys. Only the dreaded Rangers have beaten up on Toronto with greater effeciency. Some of this of course is timing, the Jays only got five games against the Yankess early in the season when they were doing their best Kansas City Royals impression.

Ted Lilly had one of his better days yesterday, going into the seventh inning and giving up three runs (two earned), whilst striking out six and most impressively walking just one. The bullpen kind of limped through the rest of the game, but got the job done. Frasor, Speier and Schoeneweis got from Lilly to Batista, and through the top of the order while giving up just a Jeter homerun. Batista came in to the 6/7/8 hitters and gave up two hits and a run for the save. That's just the fourth run he's given up in September, somehow it seems like many more. The bats did their damage early on, lighting up Jaret Wright for four runs in the first two Innings, Wright has a decent record since his return from the DL in August, but as Rickster pointed out in the chat his quality of opposition has been distinctly on the easy side. Wells had a great game with the stick, going three for four with a double and triple, and hustling like a Sparky on the bases.

Not being at the game, I'll be avoiding Yankee games at the RC for a while, I was playing around with a spreadsheet and the Jays stats page while I was watching and in the best traditions of the Box threw together a few graphs.

Hitting

infield

outfield

Pitching

• I love Sparky as much as the next Bauxite, but the evidence in the graph above suggests he might be best suited to the fourth outfielder role. His good months have coincided with a limited number of at-bats. When he is playing everyday for an extended period, his OPS tends to dip alarmingly.
• That Alexis Rios OPS graph is really depressing.
• The outfield really had an awful August.
• Only Hinske has had a significantly better first than second half. While Zaun, Hill and Rios have been worse since the break, the first two, at least, for understandable reasons.
• Has any player beeen discussed more here than Eric Hinske ? The Dude has had a great second half, this has corresponded with him being used less, particularly against lefties. Gibby seems to have found a role where he can be effective. While he's overpaid for a bench/platoon guy at first/third, if he's going to be on the roster next year (as is likely) at least there are reasons to expect decent production from him in this role.
• Whats's happened to Vinny Chulk's strikeout numbers ?
• Josh Towers has been at extraordinary walk levels in the second half, but his strikeouts have dropped off rather alarmingly.

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