Alejandro Kirk Turns Gerrit Cole Night Weird
The Jays beat the Yankees 3-1 by waiting five innings, accepting two bad throws, and letting Kirk do the actual baseball.
Friday’s 3-1 Blue Jays win over the Yankees was not a baseball game so much as a small civic incident.
Toronto looked at Gerrit Cole, looked at its own offense, looked back at Gerrit Cole, and decided the answer was Alejandro Kirk plus whatever the Yankees were willing to leave unattended.
As strategies go, it was not in the brochure.
It did work.
The Jays got six strong innings from Shane Bieber, nearly all the useful thunder from Kirk, and a sixth-inning defensive donation from New York that arrived wrapped in tissue paper and mild confusion.
This is how the Blue Jays win now.
Not with a parade.
With a catcher, a clean pitching line, and the other team briefly handling the baseball like it was covered in soup.
Five innings of trying not to sneeze
For five innings, nothing happened on the scoreboard.
That is not a complaint.
Against Gerrit Cole, nothing is an event with catering.
The first inning was 0-0.
The second was 0-0.
The third, fourth, and fifth also sat there like unmailed thank-you cards.
The Jays were not exactly turning the Rogers Centre into a pinball machine.
They finished with 8 hits, which is respectable, but the actual scoring took a more artistic route.
Brett Bateman went 2-for-4.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. went 1-for-3.
Andrés Giménez, Ernie Clement, and Kazuma Okamoto each had a hit.
George Springer went 0-for-4 and still ended up deeply involved in the game’s funniest inning, because baseball enjoys paperwork jokes.
Nathan Lukes and Jesús Sánchez were held hitless.
Charles McAdoo had one at-bat.
Myles Straw had 0 at-bats.
It was a lineup card, yes, but also a small puzzle left on a bus seat.
The Yankees donated the weird part
The top of the sixth brought the first actual run.
Trent Grisham homered off Shane Bieber on a fly ball to right field.
Yankees 1, Blue Jays 0.
A familiar shape appeared in the doorway.
The kind of shape that says: ah, yes, the Jays fought hard, got a good start, and will now spend the evening trying to solve Gerrit Cole with a spoon.
Then the bottom of the sixth happened.
George Springer grounded into a force out against Cole, fielded by third baseman Ryan McMahon.
Nathan Lukes was out at third.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. scored.
Then came a throwing error by McMahon.
Then came a throwing error by first baseman Luis García Jr.
One play contained enough administrative nonsense to qualify for its own extension cord.
Toronto had tied the game without producing the kind of clean, heroic swing that gets framed above a mantel.
It was less rally and more lobby accident.
But it counted.
We are not returning it to the store.
Kirk brought the bat, because somebody had to
After the Yankees opened the trapdoor, Alejandro Kirk walked over and used an actual baseball bat.
Still in the bottom of the sixth, Kirk doubled off Gerrit Cole on a sharp line drive to left fielder Heliot Ramos.
Springer scored.
Blue Jays 2, Yankees 1.
There it was.
The clean swing.
The real offense.
The part of the game you could show to a neutral observer without first explaining why two throwing errors had become load-bearing architecture.
Kirk finished 2-for-3 with a home run and 2 RBI.
That is a lovely line in any context.
In this game, it felt like someone had plugged the toaster into the moon.
Then, in the bottom of the eighth, Kirk homered off Bradley Hanner on a fly ball to right center field.
His fifth homer.
Toronto 3, New York 1.
A normal team might call that an insurance run.
For the Blue Jays, it was more like finding out the parachute also came with snacks.
A win, somehow wearing a straight face
Bieber went 6.0 innings with 1 earned run and 5 strikeouts.
That is the sort of start the Jays have spent whole months treating like a delicate antique.
Please do not bump it.
Please do not place hot offense directly on the wood.
This time, the rest of the night behaved.
Louis Varland threw 1.0 inning with 0 earned runs.
Mason Fluharty threw 0.2 innings with 0 earned runs.
Tyler Rogers threw 1.1 innings with 0 earned runs.
The Yankees finished with 1 run, 5 hits, 2 errors, and 4 left on base.
Toronto finished with 3 runs, 8 hits, 0 errors, and 6 left on base.
Please notice the 0 errors.
Frame it.
Put it beside the Kirk homer and the McMahon-García throwing duet.
The Blue Jays are 60-64, with a .484 winning percentage, 4 in the division, 7-3 in their last ten, and carrying a W1 streak into Saturday.
Saturday brings Braydon Fisher against Cam Schlittler at home.
Fine.
But Friday belonged to Kirk, Bieber, and the unexpected discovery that a Gerrit Cole game can be beaten if you combine one sturdy start, one catcher doing the heavy lifting, and one Yankees inning that briefly turned into community theatre.
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