Ellsbury, Jeter, Yankees again beat Buehrle, Jays 5-3
NEW YORK (AP) -- Jacoby Ellsbury, Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees kept Mark Buehrle winless against them for more than a decade, sending the Toronto Blue Jays to their season-worst sixth straight loss, 5-3 Friday night.
New York won its third in a row to preserve its faint AL wild-card hopes.
The cheers for Jeter kept getting louder and louder during his final homestand, and fans chanted his name throughout the ninth inning.
Jeter delivered two singles, giving him back-to-back multihit games for the first time since late July. The retiring captain later hit a long fly that really got the crowd hollering before it was caught on the warning track.
The 40-year-old shortstop also alertly tricked speedy Jose Reyes off second by bluffing a throw to first, trapping him in a rundown.
Ellsbury homered, doubled and drove in three runs.
He hustled to beat a double-play relay as the Yankees took a 5-2 lead in the fourth inning, and left before the fifth with a strained right hamstring.
Buehrle (12-10) lost to the Yankees for the 12th straight time in 17 starts since April 2004. His losing streak against New York is the longest by any pitcher against a single opponent since Bobby Witt dropped 12 in a row to Cleveland starting in 1991, STATS said.
Buehrle fell to 1-14 lifetime against the Yankees.
Hiroki Kuroda (11-9) gave up Edwin Encarnacion's two-run homer off the left-field foul pole in the first, and little else.
Reliever Esmil Rogers, who was waived twice this season by Toronto, retired Encarnacion on a bases-loaded grounder to end the seventh. Adam Warren pitched 1 2-3 innings for his third save.
Canadian rookie Dalton Pompey got his first major league hit for Toronto in the second. Jeter got the ball back from the outfield and tossed it into the dugout, then gave the 21-year-old newcomer a slap on the back when the inning ended.
TRAINER'S ROOM
Blue Jays: Encarnacion had an MRI on his back before the game. Manager John Gibbons said it flared up this week in Baltimore.
Yankees: DH Carlos Beltran played for the first time since announcing his wife had a miscarriage of the couple's son. Beltran left the team Monday and returned on Thursday. Manager Joe Girardi said "sometimes, for athletes, for anyone, it's good to get back out there, to doing what you're used to doing and living that normal life. But obviously he's got a heavy heart, and we've got a heavy heart with him."
UP NEXT
Blue Jays: Rookie RHP Marcus Stroman (10-6, 3.80) starts on Saturday. He is currently appealing a six-game suspension imposed this week by Major League Baseball for throwing at the head of a Baltimore hitter in his last start. Gibbons said the team wants to get the matter resolved before the end of the season so there is no carry-over next year.
Yankees: LHP Chris Capuano (2-3, 4.55) is set to pitch against the Blue Jays for the sixth time this year. He faced them three times in relief with Boston, and has started twice against them for New York.
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