The Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday night suffered a tough loss to the division-rival New York Yankees (NYY 3, TOR 2) and doing so dropped back to .500 on the season.
Worse from the Jays' standpoint, the loss was punctuated by some momentary discord resulting from a throwing error by third baseman Joe Panik in the sixth inning. Here's a look:
That's right-hander and Wednesday night starting pitcher Ross Stripling on the mound for Toronto, and as you can see he loses all composure following the Panik miscue. While many a pitcher has been known to occasionally express dissatisfaction with the fielders behind him -- John Lackey was all too prone to this, to cite but one example -- rarely do you see a display as demonstrative as this one. The heat of competition is duly noted, but a big league pitcher has to be more in control of his emotions than Stripling was for those few seconds.
Fortunately, Stripling took full account for the mistake afterward:
Stripling also held himself to account on social media:
For what it's worth, Panik's error made no perceptible difference, as Stripling was able to strand Giancarlo Stanton at first base to end the inning. The following inning, however, he gave up the go-ahead home run to Gary Sanchez. The Yankee bullpen was able to make the lead stand up.
Stripling's 31 years of age, and he's been in the majors for parts of six seasons. That serves as a reminder that the game is a learning process as long as you're in the game. To Stripling's credit, he took his unfortunate outburst as an opportunity to do just that -- learn.
