‘More than basketball’: Rajakovic gets high marks for people skills
Jakob Poeltl and RJ Barrett speak on Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic, praising the rookie bench boss for his ability to focus on basketball while also having a perspective that stretches beyond the court.
TORONTO – The top of the New York Yankees lineup is quite the gauntlet to navigate, a path fully weaponized by the addition of Juan Soto. Placing his daunting combination of power and plate discipline in the two-hole and combining him with Anthony Rizzo to sandwich Aaron Judge with left-handed impact means there are never easy choices for opposing pitchers. Anthony Volpe’s emergence as a well-rounded leadoff threat has more than adequately filled in for the injured DJ LeMahieu’s lost table-setting, while Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres are threats to be managed in the bottom half of the order.
“I love the continuity of our lineup right now and our offence right now in that group of position players,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone. “I went into spring training kind of envisioning DJ in that one spot. I knew I wanted Judge/Soto two/three in one kind of order with the righty at the top … right, left, right, left – when a lefty is starting slide G in that four-hole and Rizzo back to five –just wanting that different look time after time. It’s not something we’ve had a lot of over the last few years.”
There’s a lot to work through, then, which is what made the 6.1 innings of one-run ball Chris Bassitt threw at them Monday night in a 3-1 Toronto Blue Jays victory so impressive.
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Bassitt deftly manoeuvring through their lineup by primarily using his sinker (30) and cutter (20), although he used six other offerings among the 97 pitches he threw. The only damage against him came in the second when consecutive singles by Gleyber Torres, Alex Verdugo and Oswaldo Cabrera brought home the game’s first run and he smothered them from there before a crowd of 30,962 that stood and cheered once he was done.
One crucial sequence came in the third, when after the Blue Jays scratched out a pair of runs against Luis Gil on Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s bases-loaded walk and a wild pitch, Volpe opened the inning with a base hit. Soto followed with a drive to centre snared by Kevin Kiermaier and after a Volpe stolen base, Judge grounded out to third and Rizzo lined out to second.
Bassitt also erased a leadoff walk to Soto in the sixth by striking out Judge before inducing an inning-ending double play, containing the heart of the lineup three times.
In doing so, Bassitt made the rest of the order do the heavy lifting, something they couldn’t manage, in an ideal approach to one of the game’s deepest offences.
“Volpe and the way he’s swinging it is kind of a different dynamic for them to have those guys behind him,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “You’ve got to contain him, for one, both at the plate and on the bases, stuff that we talked about with the guys today. And whenever you’re facing the guys in the middle of that order, you don’t want guys on base. They can flip the script pretty quickly. It’s really trying to focus on those outs that are attainable, not that every out isn’t attainable, but it’s a diverse, tough stretch there at the top, so you want to try to get them with no traffic.”
Bassitt for the most part did precisely that, allowing four hits and two walks with five strikeouts, Torres among them for the first out of the seventh, before handing the reins to Tim Mayza, who got Verdugo and Cabrera to end the frame.
Chad Green followed with a clean eighth and Yimi Garcia the ninth for his second save.
The dominant pitching was necessary with runs again hard to come by against Gil, the electric-armed righty who is uncomfortably all over the place. After the two-run second – the only Blue Jays hit that inning was Cavan Biggio’s leadoff double, Alejandro Kirk’s RBI double in the third capped the scoring.
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