NY Yankees at Toronto Blue Jays: Bombers seek bounce-back

The New York Yankees had a 3-1 lead going into the bottom of the sixth inning on Monday, and Mark Leiter Jr. might as well have been Murphy’s Law.

Granted, starter Carlos Rodon started the inning and was yanked immediately after Davis Schneider’s double, and then Leiter got the ball. From then on, the wheels went off the rails. A combination of poor control, getting burned by soft contact, and rare bad defense from Anthony Volpe proved New York’s undoing. Toronto scored four runs and held on for a 5-4 win.

Meanwhile, the rival Rays remain 1.5 games behind the Yankees, while Toronto has shrunk its third-place gap to a mere two games.

And in a Tuesday afternoon tilt, the Yankees do their own version of Marcellus Wallace sending the Wolf. Lefty Max Fried takes the mound.

Time: 3:07 p.m. ET

TV: YES, MLB Network

Betting Line: Yankees -1.5 (-165), O/U 7.5

Key Storyline: The Fried-Gausman Grudge Match. Fans will quickly recall the afternoon of Sunday, April 27. The first game of a doubleheader following Saturday’s rainout. Fried on the mound for the Yanks, Gausman for the Jays. The veteran righty had a 1-0 lead going into the bottom of the third, was ptiching well and…suddenly lost the strike zone. Five walks and six earned runs later, Gausman was pulled and then ejected after barking at home plate ump Chris Conroy.

Needless to say, expect a motivated Gausman today. He had a rough June, going 1-2 with a 5.46 ERA, but did pitch eight shutout innings against Cleveland back on June 26. He’ll need both his fastball and splitter in top form against the slumping Yankees. Fried, on the other hand, is 8-1 with an 0.93 ERA on the year in starts following a New York loss.

Pitching Matchup: Max Fried (10-2, 1.92 ERA) vs Kevin Gausman (6-6, 4.21 ERA). So, which of these pitchers has the advantage? It’s a tough call. Gausman is essentially a two-pitch pitcher with streaky career numbers versus the Yankees. Fried, meanwhile, throws seven pitches and relies on soft contact.

Thus, we dig into the deeper metrics, namely Stuff+. This stat measures a pitch’s horizontal and vertical movement, release point, and spin, with 100 being a baseline average. Gausman’s Stuff+ on the year is 101, whereas Fried’s is 111.

X-Factor: Aaron Judge. In June, Judge hit .253 with nine homers and 17 RBI. Not the worst month a hitter could have, especially because we knew it was highly unlikely the Yankee captain would keep flirting with .400. However, since the Yankees’ swoon began back on June 13, Judge has been an absolute shell of himself.

Since then, the two-time MVP is batting .197 with five of those nine home runs. Worse yet, 28 of Judge’s 42 strikeouts in June came over this stretch. He just stopped seeing the ball.

Now that it’s July, no more slumping. Judge had a two-homer game on Sunday before regressing to 0 for 2 with a pair of intentional walks Monday. Simply put, he is the engine of the Yankees lineup. When he hits well, so does the rest of the team. No better medicine to break a cold streak than the captain coming through in the clutch again.

Prediction. On one hand, the Blue Jays are the hotter team while the Yankees are barely holding serve from first place. But on the other hand, Toronto more or less lucked into its win last night thanks to the perfect storm of defensive blunders and cheap hits on weak contact. Thus, given the pitching matchup, the question is simple: Does Gausman’s average stuff dominate the Yankees, or does Toronto tee off on Fried? If you’re on New York sports betting apps and absolutely must bet this, roll the Yankees’ run line and the under. Otherwise, sit this one out. Yankees 4, Blue Jays 1