The question has always been, when push comes to shove, do the Blue Jays have the killer instinct to step on an opponent’s throat when they have the chance and put them out of their misery?

With a chance to manage a win by his own, newly written book — penned at the deadline with a deep, effective bullpen — manager John Gibbons instead went with his gut, leaving starting ace David Price in Friday’s game, with Aaron Sanchez ready and the tying run at the plate. The hesitation led to a 4-3 loss to the Yankees ,who were down by three runs and shut out for 33 straight innings. The Jays are back in second place.

Leaving Price in will be a decision that will haunt him. Gibbons had three chances to lift Price and reward him with a standing ovation from the appreciative crowd of 46,689, the eighth sellout of the season at Rogers Centre. He could have let Price bask after seven shutout innings, with Sanchez starting the eighth. He could have relieved him after the one-out single by Mark Teixeira, although lefty Brian McCann was next. Or he could have removed him after the McCann hit with the tying run at first base. Instead, he allowed Price to face Chase Headley, who already had two hits in the game.

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Headley stroked a ground-rule double to left-centre field to end the Jays’ scoreless streak against the Yankees at 33 innings.

“Dave is one of the elite pitchers in the game,” Gibbons said. “Those guys find a way, sometimes. But three hits and then it started to snowball. Take him out and it’s just the tying run at second base. He did his job, really.”

Then Sanchez entered with the tying run at second and one out. Veteran Carlos Beltran pinch-hit and drove the game-winning, streak-ending homer to right-centre.

“After the big double, I felt good about bringing Sanchy in,” Gibbons said. “It didn’t work out. When those don’t work, you analyze it, that’s for sure. That didn’t work.”

Gibbons, prior to the hyped battle for first place, refused to answer a direct question as to whether he believed his Jays are a better team than the Yankees. The Jays may be, but they will need to win the next two games to regain and maintain their lead. Gibbons would only suggest these are two very good teams and that his Jays are better than they were.

Not much separates the two AL East teams through the first two-thirds of the schedule. The Yankees and Jays are similar in many ways, but the one area that GM Alex Anthopoulos made sure he improved on his club at the trade deadline was the team’s defence, and that may have helped in immediately closing the gap that stood at six games as the July 31 deadline came and went.

With Ben Revere in left field, Troy Tulowitzki at shortstop and Justin Smoak playing virtually every game at first base, Gibbons has not had to worry about bringing in defenders late in games in which the Jays are leading. It allows them to go with an eight-man bullpen and a three-man bench, at least for the moment, because they are not having to use those players late in games for defence.

“You like being able to do that,” Gibbons said of his band of nine-inning gamers. “You’ve got to wait for the lead. Ideally, you run your set lineup and just let ’em roll and if a guy needs a day off, you need to pinch-hit, you do that, but that speaks about your team. If you can put your starters out there and leave them in there because that’s your best setup, it definitely makes it easier.”

The Jays’ defence showed up in the third inning. First it was Justin Smoak taking a high throw from a flat-footed Josh Donaldson who had retreated down the line to make the play. With some deft footwork he seemed to have made the play on Brendan Ryan, but the umpire ruled safe and the replay was not enough to overturn. Then Donaldson raced down the line for an over-the-shoulder catch and Kevin Pillar kept the game scoreless, stealing extra bases from Alex Rodriguez. Price struck out Teixeira to end the threat and the Jays responded with three runs in the bottom of the frame that looked like it would be enough to extend the win streak to 12 games.

Smoak, a waiver claim by the Jays from Seattle last October, has become a favourite of his fellow infielders at first base, and his presence allows Edwin Encarnacion to act primarily as DH. Smoak has started the last nine games at first base.

“You look at any team that wins a championship, (they have) good defence — football, basketball, baseball, it doesn’t matter,” Smoak said. “For us, I honestly think we’re an all-around team now. We always know coming out of spring training we were going to be able to hit. We knew we had some (pitching) arms, but at the same time we’ve got some key guys there that can close it down, and defensively we’ve become a lot better. When you can save the big innings, that always helps.”

Perhaps an undervalued part of the Jays’ resurgence has been the home fans at the Rogers Centre. The fans have a role in the clubhouse’s feel-good existence.

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“It’s been tremendous,” Smoak said. “A 12:30 game (Thursday), sellout crowd. I mean, come on, mid-week, that doesn’t happen every day. These fans are getting excited, just like we are. It kind of gives you that little extra adrenaline to go out there and keep winning ballgames.”

The Jays need to regroup after the tough loss on Friday night. The Yankees are a resilient veteran group with a very tough bullpen. Gibbons will have to learn from it.

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