Long Ball Stories

The incredibly long grind of 162 games that makes up the regular season of major league baseball can be a source of joy but also great frustration for both the fan and the player. Every one of the 162 games offers the opportunity for either the joy that comes with a win, or the sadness and reflection that comes with a loss.

The goal of a team that hopes to make the playoffs, where anything can happen, is to win around 100 games in the regular season. More would be great, of course, but 100 wins will guarantee a spot in the playoffs, and pretty much assure a division title, so that the team doesn’t have to play in the dreaded sudden-death wild card game.

But winning 100 games, for those of us, including me, who are math-challenged, also means losing 62, or thereabouts. That’s a lot of losses, and a lot of ways to lose, from blow-outs to nail-biters, from pitching duels to slugfests, from wire-to-wire affairs to excruciating comebacks, from sloppy hot messes to crisp clean baseball. But still, 62 losses. Which means that it’s best to be philosophical about an individual loss, at least to the point in the season where they start to pile up and threaten the possibility of achieving the end goal. The fan, as I’m sure do the players, must resist the temptation to go into “but . . ., but . . .,” mode, because there are more cases of losses that were destined to be than losses which could have been wins.

Tonight’s opener of the four-game Jays-Indians series at the TV Dome on Canada Day weekend was one of those losses where the response has to be “oh well, let’s move on”.

Both teams came into the series with a head of steam, though the Indians’ was several hat sizes larger than the Jays, who were returning from a tough six-game road trip during which they had salvaged a split by taking two of three from the Colorado Rockies in the tough environs of the Beer Barrel. With a day’s rest and the exciting Canada Day festivities, which always draw big, enthusiastic crowds, ahead of them, the home team had much to be optimistic about.

How much more upbeat, though, should the Indians have been coming in? After all, they arrived leading the American League Central Division by six full games over the World Series champs, the Kansas City Royals, their record of 47-30 was tied for second best in the American League with the Baltimore Orioles, behind only the very hot Texas Rangers, and they were riding the crest of a twelve-game winning streak.

The pitching matchup contributed to the sense of modest optimism for the Jays versus serious swagger for the Indians. R. A. Dickey, whose numbers have improved dramatically since his usual slow April start, would take the hill for the Jays, who would be expecting him, as always, to yield a couple of homers but all in all provide a quality start, which would normally be enough for a Jays team that is clearly starting to right its early-season offensive dithers. On the other hand, Cleveland would start Carlos Carrasco, who, after a stint on the DL in May, had come back strong, with his record standing at 3-2, with an ERA of 2.73, going into tonight’s game. What’s more, he was coming off a complete-game, four-hit shutout on the road in Detroit, in his last outing.

Today’s game closely followed the script that could have been written for it. Dickey was effective again, walking only one and striking out four, while throwing no wild pitches and not contributing to Josh Thole’s entirely understandable but very high passed ball total. It was absolutely a quality start, as he exited after seven innings, having given up three runs on eight hits. In typical Dickey fashion, two of the three runs scored against him came on solo homers, from Rajai Davis in the second, and Jason Kipnis in the third. The third came in when Jose Ramirez’ base hit to centre cashed a Mike Napoli double leading off the sixth. After the third run, Dickey quickly regained command and retired the last six batters he faced.

Dickey’s season stats, of course, are deceiving. His ERA of 4.23 coming in derives from the terrible April record, and shows every prospect of ending the season in the mid to high threes if he stays healthy. His won-loss record of 5-8 before tonight’s game is to be to totally disregarded, because of the Jays’ well-known tragic propensity not to score runs for him.

And this was the last night that we might have hoped for some runs being put on the board behind the knuckle baller. Carlos Carrasco was mesmerizing and dominant, and the three runs given up by Dickey were one more than he needed. Aided by a double play in the first that erased Devon Travis, who had reached on a base hit, Carrasco had faced the minimum number of hitters until Josh Donaldson took him deep to centre with two out in the fourth for the Jays’ only run. He exited in the eighth after the third hit by the Jays, a ground rule double to right by Darwin Barney, and left with this sparkling line: seven and a third innings, one run, three hits, one walk, and fourteen strikeouts.

Cleveland relievers Brian Shaw and Cody Allen added three more strikeouts to the total for the Jays, who fanned 17 times on the night. It hardly mattered that Carrasco was out of the game; he had put the home team bats down to sleep for the night, and they never even woke up for a late-night cookie-and-milk after he left.

So Carlos Carrasco pitched a terrific game, the Indians dented Dickey enough to give him a lead, and he and the Tribe’s bullpen were good enough to breeze home. Oh well, let’s move on.

A word about the title of today’s piece: I know the game really wasn’t a fiasco either from the perspective of Carrasco or of the Jays, but I just kind of liked the way “Carrasco Fiasco” sounded, okay?

Another word about the word “fiasco”: I’m often amazed by the inappropriate names that are often chosen by the proprietors of businesses, particularly restaurants. There was once a restaurant in Bloor West Village called Fiasco. It wasn’t, really, having an okay run of a couple or three years or so, more or less typical of restaurants in Toronto, but I always wondered about the name. What were they thinking?

Today’s deciding game of the Jays-Rockies interleague series at Denver’s Beer Barrel Park offered a number of interesting story lines. Would the two teams, both built to take advantage of cozy dimensions in their home parks, continue to put up the big numbers they had in the first two games, in which they scored a combined 37 runs? Would the Jays find a way to put a leash on Nolan Arenado and Carlos Gonzalez, Colorado’s version of the Bash Brothers? Would Edwin Encarnacion keep mashing baseballs into pulp? Finally, could Aaron Sanchez master the Rockies in their home park as he has most of the teams he’s faced this year?

So as not to keep you in suspense, here are the answers provided by the events of today: no, the run production didn’t keep up. The two teams totalled eight runs, as opposed to over 18 a game in the first two games . The biggest bashers on both sides were more or less quiet, both Arenado and Gonzalez getting one base hit and neither producing a run, while Edwin went two for three with a double and an RBI, but failed to hit one out of the park, so it was a relatively modest day for him at the plate. Maybe it made sense for the starting pitching to be the best part of today’s game, since today’s starters would have been the least affected by the lateness of last night’s game and the short twelve-hour turnaround for today’s 1:00 local start. As for whether Sanchez could continue his series of solid starts today against the Rockies in Denver, the answer is most decidedly yes.

If I had to say what kind of mold Aaron Sanchez seems to be fitting into as this first full season of his starting career unfolds, I think I’d put him in the category of a Jack Morris. Compared to the big power pitchers in the Naional League, like Stephen Strasburg and Noah Syndergard, he’s not dominating or intimidating, despite his obvious size and strength. You kind of expect, when you look at him, that he’s going to blow batters away big time, with high strikeout totals. But that’s not what he does. If you wanted another Blue Jay analogy, it might be that he’s more Dave Stieb than Roy Halladay. But without the attitude. Of either of them.

Today, for example, he went eight full innings, and not for the first time this year. He allowed one run and six hits, walked two, and struck out three. It’s not like he’ll go long stretches of, say, 12, or 15 outs in a row. Teams get their runners on base against him, like in four of the eight innings he pitched today, but he has the highly valued ability to bear down and get the outs he needs after yielding baserunners.

One of the criticisms I would consistently make about Jays’ Manager John Gibbons’ handling of his starting pitchers is his tendency to assume the end has come when the starter gets in a spot of trouble in the sixth or seventh inning. I realize that, especially with Sanchez and Marcus Stroman, who are pretty young to carry the responsibility that they do, there is a tendency to be a little protective, both of their confidence and their arms. But to me one mark of a mature major league starter is that he has developed the ability to work his way out of his own jams. If, for example, Sanchez or Stroman were more experienced, I would respect them for saying to the manager, “Listen, I’ve got plenty left in the tank. I can do this. Piss off, and take your hook back to the dugout.” That’s what Jack Morris would say. I have no doubt that that’s what David Price says, hiding it behind his big goofy grin.

To me the most significant moment in today’s game, both as a turning point for the Jays’ win, and as a significant signpost on the road to Aaron Sanchez establishing his bona fides as a top-of-the-rotation starter, came in the Rockies’ seventh. They had opened the inning with a Mark Reynolds single, following which Sanchez had walked Daniel Descalso. After getting Brandon Barnes to fly out to Kevin Pillar in centre, he issued another base on balls, to catcher Tony Wolters. I had expected to see Gibbie pop out of the dugout after the Descalso walk, so I thought sure that the second walk would be it for Sanchez. But, no: Gibbie to his credit left him in—you’re a big boy, you can get out of this—and didn’t Sanchez induce an inning-ending double-play ball from pinch-hitter Ryan Raburn?

Just to show that Gibbie had made the right call in the long run, he sent Sanchez back out for the eighth, already at 96 pitches, and Sanchez finished up his day’s work by getting two ground ball outs and a foul popup from the top of the Colorado batting order on just ten pitches, to finish at 106 pitches, and, by now, a 5-1 lead.

The Jays’ manager turned the ball over to Roberto Osuna for the ninth in the non-save situation, partly because Osuna needed the work, and partly because, well, just because. The Jays’ shaky bullpen, right? And as usual in non-save situations, Osuna was less than perfect. In fact, I’d like to see the split of his save-situation ERA versus his non-save situation ERA. Maybe even thrown in a third split, for when he’s used in tie games or when the Jays are down one, and seriously need a hold. Today, for example, he struck out the side . . . on 29 pitches . . . giving up two runs on three hits, a walk, and a hit batsman. This is what it looked like: Gonzalez walk, Reynolds double, Descalso double, Barnes whiff, Wolters double, Hundley pinch-hitting whiff, Blackmon hit by pitch, Adames whiff. All in a day’s work, right, Bobbie? Piece of cake, was it?

Colorado rookie lefty Tyler Anderson pitched well enough to win as well, going six innings on 107 pitches. He gave up two earned runs on eight hits, walked two, and struck out six. Like Sanchez, Anderson must have reaped the benefits of having been able to cuddle up on the bench in a hoodie during the previous night’s crazy rain-delayed slugfest.

The Jays broke on top in the second on an RBI double by Junior Lake, but couldn’t cash Pillar on third and Lake on second with one out, letting Anderson wriggle off the hook. They increased the lead to 3-0 in the third with a massive solo shot by Josh Donaldson, followed by a an Edwin Encarnacion double, Edwin was then delivered by Troy Tulowitzki who went the other way to single to right. Sanchez gave up his only run in the fourth when Descalso delivered Nolan Arenado from third with a two-out base hit. This, after the first two Rockies’ hitters had reached on base hits, and Sanchez had dampened the threat by getting Mark Reynolds to hit into a double play.

The lead was extended to 4-1 in the seventh on three base hits, the RBI going to—who else—Encarnacion. This may have given Sanchez the extra gas he needed to pitch out of the bottom-of-the-seventh jam I described earlier. We added a fifth run in the top of the ninth without a base hit, as very raw right-hander Carlos Estevez came in wild as a March hare, and helped the Jays along with two walks, a hit batter, and a wild pitch that finally plated Ryan Goins, who was running for Encarnacion who had walked.

The extra runs picked up by the Jays in the seventh and the ninth then, were actually needed by Osuna to give him the cushion to protect, finally, the sparkling effort by Aaron Sanchez.

I haven’t weighed in yet on the question of preserving Sanchez by sending him to the bullpen a little further into the season. I have done a lot of teeth-grinding over it, though. How do you arbitrarily shut down, assuming his arm would still be healthy, a guy who is your number one-A starter after Marco Estrada, just because he woud be going where he had never gone before, past 130 innings? Methinks, however, that the decision to shut Sanchez down may not be irrevocable after all, and the pressure on Jays’ management to rethink the whole thing must be building.

So tomorrow we return to the TV Dome, having a saw-off to show for the six-game westward swing. Not great, but minimally acceptable. But now we’re looking at Cleveland though, and how ’bout them Indians, eh?

There’s just enough of a kid in me that as a general rule I really, really hate rainouts. I guess I never was very good at delayed gratification. The only exception is when the game is out west, in a later time zone. In that case, I’ll take a rainout any day over a long delay before starting the game, since if they finally go ahead and play, like they did tonight after two hours and forty minutes, it’s going to run into the wee hours, and beyond.

As I checked in on the visuals from the Beer Barrel ball park, it was pretty clear that tonight was off the books and we’d be looking at playing two tomorrow. There was a flood waste deep in the tunnel between the Rockies’ clubhouse and their dugout . There was so much hail, and it was so chunky, that it looked like drifting snow on the infield tarp. The grounds crew had to shovel the ice pellets into groundskeepers’ carts. No game tonight, for sure.

Then, about 10:30 Toronto time, a banner started to run across the bottom of the cable feed stating that the game was projected to start at 11:20 p.m. I groaned. 11:20, average game time three hours, 2:20 in the morning—not much sleep for the old scribe tonight! Oh well, maybe it would be a nice, crisp, two hours-ten minutes pitchers’ duel. At the Beer Barrell?? As if.

When the game finally started, a minute late even, the stink would have started emanating from the screen immediately, if they’d ever actually invented Smellovision. Up against the raw, unpolished rookie Eddie Butler, the Jays went down meekly in the first, despite Josh Donaldson drawing a two-out walk. Here’s a thing to consider: Donaldson leads the American League in walks. If he’s hitting third and draws a walk in the first inning, how often will that be with two outs? If he’s hitting second and draws a walk, the inning is exponentially (I would think—remember, I don’t do analytics) more promising. On the other hand, the significance of the batting order the first time through may be highly over-rated. What is likely more significant is whom you’re hitting behind, or ahead of. Tonight, as we’ll see, Zeke Carrera and Devon Travis stirred up all kinds of trouble for the Rockies, and whose big bat came to the plate next every time they started something? Sure paid off in the fourth inning.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. I was still recalling the nervous stench of the first inning. After Butler put the Jays down, Jay Happ took the mound, and immediately revived the recent concern about his location and efficiency that have been so good for much of the season. Not that the first inning troubles were really his fault. Charlie Blackmon led off with a lame bloop single to left. Christhian (still not a typo) Adames followed with an even lamer bloop single to right, that floated agonizingly softly over Devon Travis’ glove, hit the turf, and quickly splashed to a stop in the flooded no-man’s land. Two mis-hits, two baserunners. Nolan Arenado was the first to hit the ball hard, really hard, driving Zeke Carrera to the wall in right for the out. Blackmon tagged up and easily took third on the catch. Carlos Gonzalez lined a single to centre for the Rockies’ first run. Trevor Story hit the ball hard to left, over Michael Saunders’ head, but Saunders scrambled back, stretched all of his considerable length up toward the ball, and just snagged it. We were now up to one run, two cheap hits, and three hard-hit balls that produced two outs and the run. Finally, Happ froze Mark Reynolds on a two-two pitch, his 31st of the inning, to limit the damage, but not lift the gloom.

The second inning passed uneventfully. Butler continued to labour, but set the Jays down in order. The Rockies efficiently moved a leadoff double by catcher Nick Hundley to third with a following right-side ground-out, but Happ shut the door this time, fanning the pitcher and getting Blackmon on a grounder to first.

The Blue Jays employed some National League small ball to tie it up in the third, but the sense of the fates conspiring against us continued, as Michael Saunders, with the bases loaded, ended the inning by driving the ball deep to centre field where Charlie Blackmon had to make a very good catch on it, so close it was to a bases-clearing double. Pillar had led off with a single to right, bringing Happ, with considerable National League experience, to the plate. Happ calmly and efficiently bunted Pillar to second, and after Butler walked Zeke Carrera Devon Travis delivered Pillar with a clutch single to right. Josh Donaldson then drove the ball deep to Blackmon in centre, letting Carrera advance to third. A walk to Edwin Encarnacion, one of three he would receive tonight, set the table for Saunders to be disappointed by Blackmon. At least we’d tied it up. For the moment.

For the third inning in a row the Rockies’ leadoff hitter reached base. In fact, only in his last inning, the fifth, would Happ retire the leadoff hitter. Not a practice conducive to keeping your pitch count down! This time it was a walk to Adames. For the second time in a row Nolan Arenado hit the ball hard, but for a double, Adames stopping at third. This brought up Carlos Gonzalez, whom Buck and Pat and the other cool guys call “Car-go”. Ugh. What a load. Also ugh that for the second night in a row he pounded a three-run homer to right, and with no one out, and not so much as a howdy-do, Happ and the Jays were down 4-1. With that business off his mind, the suddenly erratic veteran lefty settled down and retired the remaining hitters in order.

Baseball is a pretty strange game, though, and for some reason the baseball gods decided to smile down on the Blue Jays, for almost the first time in a week, and for the first time ever in Denver. Troy Tulowitzki led off, and gave his adoring Denver fans the moment they’d been waiting for, as long as the Rockies held the lead. They were very happy for him as he hit a rope over the left-field fence. No doubt his Toronto teammates were a lot happier, though, at this quick answer to the Gonzalez soul-crusher.

Russell Martin singled to right, which means all’s well with the world, and after Kevin Pillar fanned, we came to one of those National League moments that show how interesting things can happen even if you’re forced to send a weak hitter to the plate. Eager to prove himself useful, Jay Happ laid down a second sacrifice bunt on the day. This one went back to the raw rookie on the mound, and he thought he had a shot at Martin at second, so threw the ball into the outfield, which didn’t work out so well for him. Martin jumped up and scampered to third (I don’t know, what do you think: can I say that Russell Martin scampers?) Meanwhile, Happ was safely ensconced at first, and promptly put in a call to the dugout for his roller blades, which didn’t arrive in time. Ezequiel Carrera delivered Martin with a single to right to cut the lead to one, and it was time for Rockies’ manager Walt Weiss to relieve Mr. Anderson of his burdensome duties.

Unfortunately for him, he called on journeyman lefthander Yohan Flande to take over, but Flande forgot to bring his instruction book on how to get out of trouble. Devon Travis singled to left to load the bases, and Josh Donaldson promptly unloaded them with what should have been a double to right, but comically turned into a triple when it hit something funny in the corner and started rolling quickly down along the wall in foul territory, in the general direction of the infield. Gonzalez chased after the rolling ball, that seemed to be picking up speed. Gonzalez, like an eager retriever playing fetch, kept after it until someone, probably first baseman Mark Reynolds, beat him to the ball and Gonzalez could go back to his post in right, his tail between his legs and his tongue hanging out. Meanwhile, Donaldson fetched up at third.

At this point in a typical Encarnacion surge, no one in the American League, or even the Rockies, is about to pitch to Edwin with one out and a runner on third, so even without his how-to book, Flande knew to give the big guy a free pass. That brought up Michael Saunders, and gave Flande a chance to contribute to a really weird statistic: Saunders bounced one back to the pitcher, who tried for the force at second, and maybe a double play, but threw wildly. Encarnacion was safe, Donaldson scored, and two Rockies’ pitchers had each made throwing errors to second base in the same inning. I told you it was weird. Troy Tulowitzky let Flande off the hook for the extra baserunners by grounding into a double play. All told, this strange sequence of events resulted in six runs for the Jays, which vaulted them into a 7-4 lead that they would never relinquish, though that doesn’t mean that it was a walk in the park for the rest of the night.

In the bottom of the fourth the Rockies cashed a leadoff double by Brandon Barnes to cut the lead to two, and in the top of the fifth the Jays cashed a leadoff walk to Russell Martin with a two-out double to right by Ezequiel Carrera to restore the lead to three, where it remained while Happ stranded a couple of singles in the bottom of the fifth, but also ran his pitch total to 103, so it was his last inning. By the end of the fifth, both starters were out of the game.

Unlike so many of their games this year, the Jays continued to hit and score in the late innings, accumulating a commanding lead over Colorado. In the sixth, Martin, Pillar, and Junior Lake all racked up two-out base hits with runners in scoring position, though Lake’s only produced an outfield assist for the Rockies because Pillar was thrown out at the plate on a strong throw by left fielder Brandon Barnes for the third run. The clutch hitting provided three more add-on runs, and the Jays’ lead was extended to 11-5. Runs in the seventh, on a sacrifice fly by Michael Saunders, the eighth, on an RBI single by Devon Travis, and an unearned run in the ninth combined for 14 runs on 18 hits, the Jays’ highest run and hit outputs of the season.

After Happ’s premature departure, the results from the Toronto relievers were generally good, as they maintained the lead, with Joe Biagini having a good sixth, Jason Grilli coming in to wrap up the eighth, and Roberto Osuna pitching a clean ninth just because he needed the work. What’s that, you say? I left out the Colorado seventh? Well, that was a special case, you see.

With his good sixth inning under his belt, Biagini, working on a fair bit of rest, coughed up four to the Rockies in the seventh, but an unusual catching error by Edwin Encarnation not only kept the inning alive, but rendered three of the four runs off Biagini unearned. Nelson Arenado led off with a double, and his partner in crime Carlos Gonzalez doubled him home for the only legit run off Biagini, to make the score 12-6. Biagini quickly got two ground ball outs, while Gonzalez moved around to third, whence he scored when Nick Hundley reached as a catchable throw from Troy Tulowitzki at short ticked off Encarnacion’s glove at first. Gonzalez scored the second run of the inning, unearned because the play should have ended it. For those of you keeping score at home, as Ernie Harwell used to say, this also made any subsequent runs unearned, such as the two that followed on single-walk-single before Biagini struck out catcher Tony Wolters to end the inning at last.

Regardless of the injustice of it all, the lead was now 12-9, with two innings to go in the Beer Barrell, where the dry air juices the ball and the fences beckon enticingly. It was not for nothing that the hearts of Jays’ fans were set a-fluttering by that star-crossed seventh, but the pickup runs in the eighth and nine quickly restored calm to all our breasts, and our boys escaped Denver with a two-one series win. Hail Columbia.

On a personal note, if you have read the short biography of yer humble scribbler on the site, you will recall that I noted that one of the reasons that 1968 was the best of years was that it was the year the Tigers finally won it all, and another reason was that it was the year that my lovely and talented wife and I were wed. (I love sounding archaic, especially when waxing sentimental.) I have just finished reporting on today’s Blue Jays’ game of June 28, 2016. Well, today is the forty-eighth (!) anniversary of our wedding day, and I thought I’d fill you in briefly on certain circumstances surrounding our wedding concerning which I have frequently found it necessary to defend myself over the years.

Our candlelight wedding was scheduled to begin at 8:00 on Friday evening, the twenty-eighth of June, 1968. It seems that there was a brief delay just before the ceremony was to start because the prospective groom had not yet appeared at his appointed spot. It turned out that I was ensconced in the chaplain’s office with my best man and my one usher (it was a small affair), ears glued to a transistor radio tuned to the Tigers’ broadcast from Tiger Stadium across the river in Detroit. As the clock clicked closer to eight, I now admit that I was repeating to myself that age-old refrain, “just one more pitch, just one more pitch”.

I freely admit that I was (ever so slightly!) late for my own wedding because I couldn’t tear myself away from the ball game. As I was thinking about concluding this piece, the thought occurred: what was going on in that game that night that was so compelling?

It turns out that some of the stats geeks have put together a wonderfully useful site called Baseball-reference.com, on which you can find more details that you would ever need to know about any game in major league history starting from 1910. It turns out that on my wedding night the Tigers defeated the Chicago White Sox five to four, one of their 103 wins that year. And what was going on as the minutes and seconds ticked down toward what was supposed to be the beginning of my wedding? Well, the game had been scoreless for an inning and a half, with relatively quick innings, but in the bottom of the second, the Tigers’ slugging outfielder Willie Horton cadged a walk off the legendary Chisox knuckleballer Wilbur Wood, and then slugging first baseman Norm Cash, the original “Stormin’ Norman” gave the Jays a two-run lead with a big home run. That must have been the moment when I tore myself away from the radio because I can remember being really happy as I hurried toward the chapel. I know that this was because I was racing toward my wedding and the rest of my life, but I also suspect that it was also because the Tiges had just taken the lead. Despite my wife’s enjoyment at regaling all of our friends and acquaintances with this story of her goofy husband on his wedding night, I have never for a moment felt embarrassed about being torn between my baseball team and the woman I love.

Tomorrow Aaron Sanchez starts for us in the series finale. How will the sterling young righty fare in that hitter’s paradise the Rockies call home?

For some odd reason, and despite the overwhelming emphasis on relief pitching in contemporary major league baseball, there is currently no major award allocated to the best relief pitcher in each league. This strange omission to the parade of post-season awards is likely to make little difference to Roberto Osuna, the Jays’ terrific young closer, this year. Not because he’s not one of the best in the league, but because the way things have been going he’d never get enough save opportunities to merit consideration for this award that no longer exists. Until the Blue Jays can find someone, or, better, three someones, who can come in from the bullpen carrying a fire hose rather than a gasoline can, the odds of a save opportunity being passed on to Osuna by the bridge guys are extremely long.

There was an award for relief pitching from 1960, when The Sporting News established the Fireman of the Year awards, through 1977, when sponsorship was acquired by the pharma company that produces Rolaids, the proprietary treatment for acid indigestion, They maintained what was renamed the Rolaids Relief Award until 2012, when their relationship with major league baseball came to an end. Anyone of a certain age will find it really hard to suppress the memory of their ubiquitous tv commercials in which various random characters posed the rhetorical question, “how do I spell relief?” and then spelled out the answer: “R-O-L-A-I-D-S”. You can thank me later for giving you your ear-worm for the day.

Tonight’s implosion in the Colorado Rockie’s seventh inning by Drew Storen and Jesse Chavez was only the latest, but perhaps one of the most (insert any negative adjective you choose here—we can call it a “write your own game story” experience) examples of the Jays’ pen letting down not only the starting pitcher, but the rest of the team. If they are to make the playoffs, a couple of pitchers have to step up, or be found, who can do a consistently better job than the current denizens of the bullpen. A number of the Jays’ relievers have had very good outings over the course of the year, but every night it’s a crap shoot for Manager John Gibbons as to whether or not he can depend on anybody for more than one good outing out of two, or even three, appearances.

To be fair to the team’s relievers, the crew has been beset with injuries since spring training. Veteran left-handers Aaron Loup and Franklin Morales started the season on the DL, and though Loup came back for a few outings he’s now out again, and Morales is only just now finishing up his rehab stint at Buffalo. Brett Cecil, who had a great season in 2015, and was expected to be one-half of a solid setup duo with Drew Storen, had a number of spectacular flameouts early in the season, and then, just as he seemed to be sorting things out, he was detoured by an injury, and is currently accompanying Morales on the rehab brigade in Buffalo. And it certainly didn’t help that Gavin Floyd, who has been solid in full-inning and longer appearances for most of the season, after an early period of adjustment to pitching out of the bullpen, recently pulled himself from a game because of shoulder tightness, and then joined the growing list of Jays’ relievers on the disabled list.

Pat Venditte, Ryan Tepera, and now Bo Schultz, just returned from off-season hip surgery, have been brought up from time to time from Buffalo to fill in and shore things up when the arms out there were getting tired, but the first two have had varying degrees of success, and the jury’s still out on Schultz, who struck out the side in his first inning of work for the season against Chicago on Sunday, but also yielded an insurance solo homer by J. B. Shuck that threw the last shovels of earth on the Jays’ coffin in Sunday’s 5-2 loss to the White Sox. That leaves Joe Biagini, who has been surprisingly good, but is a rule five guy, whom the Giants didn’t think was ready for prime time, and Chavez, who’s been very good lately but was terrible last night. And of course poor Osuna, sitting down there praying for a chance to do some meaningful work.

Obscured in the general angst among the Jays and their supporters over the horrible six-run Rockie uprising in the seventh tonight were three other significant developments that occurred during the game. Not to mention an emotional reception of returning hero Troy Tulowitzki by the Colorado crowd when he came to the plate for his first at-bat in his first game back in Denver after last year’s shocking trade. The Rockies’ fans, many of them wearing his name on their backs, rose and gave full cry to their love for Tulo as he came up, and the generally reserved Toronto shortstop stepped out of the box and doffed his cap to the crowd, a gesture they deeply appreciated. They also appreciated it when Rockies’ starter Jon Gray struck him out on a caught looking a few moments later. Hey, it’s nice to see an old favourite return to the scene of his greatest moments, but baseball’s baseball, right?

Besides Tulo’s return, credit must be given to Marco Estrada for yet another excellent starting performance, to Devon Travis and especially Edwin Encarnacion for bringing out their heavy lumber, and for the 24-year-old Gray, who hung in there for six innings, giving up four runs and striking out eight while not walking a batter, to improve his record to five and three, and get his ERA under 5.00.

Estrada came into tonight’s game riding an amazing streak of eleven straight starts of pitching six innings or more while giving up five hits or less, a record that went back to 1913 until he broke it in his last start. He also led the majors in opponents’ batting average allowed. And it was all good for him tonight. He extended the streak to twelve games, and emerged from the game still maintaining an opponents’ batting average of .168, still comfortably ahead of Jake Arrieta, at .178. Except.

Except, remember that sore back issue he was concerned about, that apparently stemmed from one of his at-bats in Philadelphia? Well, the story is that it’s not as bad, but still a bit of a problem. He was accordingly on a short leash from Manager John Gibbons tonight, who said later that he was going to pull him after six innings. And that magical sixth was the wall for Estrada, though he did finish it and left with the lead, insulating himself from what seems like the inevitable loss that followed. Armed with a shiny 4-0 lead, thanks to an RBI single by Josh Donaldson and a huge homer by Edwin Encarnacion in the top of the inning, he walked Charlie Blackmon to lead off, and gave up a double to short left centre by Christhian (not a typo, by the way) Adames, that was gained by sheer hustle. In typical Estrada fashion, he fanned the imposing Nolan Arenado for the second time, but couldn’t get by the Rockies’ second basher, Carlos Gonzalez, who dispatched what Estrada later said was a good pitch into the right field seats, and the four-run lead was down to one shaky run. After a double by Mark Reynolds, Estrada got the last two outs, but, his pitch count ballooned from 63 to 91 and his lead shaved to one, he was done for the night. After Kevin Pillar hit a two-out double down the left-field line off Gray, Justin Smoak was inserted to hit for Estrada, which was at least neat and sensible since he was done anyway. But it didn’t work, as Smoak popped out in foul territory, Arenado coming in from third to take the ball over the first-base foul line, to save catcher Nick Hundley the bother.

At least Drew Storen appreciated being able to start the seventh instead of coming in already in trouble, right? Right?

Aaron Sorkin, who created, produced, and wrote most of the first four seasons of the series The West Wing, that changed series television forever, has a penchant for dropping a line that immediately becomes universally useful. One of my favourites is in the series pilot of Wing, when Rob Lowe’s character Sam Seaborn suddenly realizes that the attractive elementary school teacher that he’s trying to pick up while guiding a tour of her class through the White House is actually the daughter of his formidable boss, the president’s chief of staff. “Oh, this is wrong on so many levels,” he says, while squirming under the amused gaze of the young woman.

Well, the performance of Storen and Jesse Chavez in the seventh inning tonight was so wrong on so many levels that I hardly know where to begin. So let’s say what you don’t do, if you have any control over the situation at all. You don’t let the number eight hitter lead off with a single. You don’t let Rockies’ manager Walt Weiss get away with the cheap National League trick of putting in a pitcher to pinch-bunt for your starter, who’s done pitching anyway, because the pinch-bunt pitcher is a better bunter than the starter that he’s pinch-bunting for.  Pitch him high, jam him, don’t let him get the ball down. And if he does, you suck it up and don’t blow your cool by overthrowing and hitting the next two batters. This brought Nolan Arenado, smarting over his lousy night so far, to the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out. You try not to give up a two-run single to him, but some things are just out of your control, and that’s when you give it up for the next guy.

And when you’re Jesse Chavez, that next guy, you don’t give up a single to load the bases again, you don’t subsequently walk in the Rockies’ third run of the inning, and you don’t give up two more base hits and three more runs before getting the hook with only a second out achieved. What you do do, if you’re Ryan Tepera and you just arrived from Buffalo, and you come into this hot mess with six runs in and two runners still on, is you blow away the pinch hitter Ryan Raburn, sent in to hit for the pinch-bunter/pitcher, and end the disgrace. Thank you Ryan (both of you) for your gracious bounty.

The last notes of this farce that went from a 4-0 lead to a 9-4 deficit were at least a little encouraging. Tepera came back in the eighth and retired the side in order, racking up Arenado in the process for two strikeouts, no baserunners, and only 20 pitches in one and a third innings. Leaving aside the homer off Schultz last night, maybe the newest reinforcements from Buffalo will give us a bit of a boost. And Edwin Encarnacion led off the ninth with another smash out of the park, this time to right centre, off mop-up man Jason Motte, to continue adding to his impressive June totals, not to mention his major-league-leading RBI count.

One of the strangest facts to arise from the current series is that before tonight’s game there were 15 interleague games in history between the Blue Jays and the Rockies, 6 in Denver and 9 in Toronto. The home team had won every single one of those 15 games. Tonight extended the home-team dominance between the two to 16 games, and may it end right there. Jay Happ, over to you.

There was a Sale at the ball park in Chicago, but no bargains on offer for the Blue Jays, as Chris Sale dominated for seven innings while the White Sox nibbled away at a fifty-percent-better Marcus Stroman to secure a 5-2 victory, and a series win against our heroes.

In certain jurisdictions, primarily the UK, what we generally refer to as a garage sale or a yard sale is called a “tag sale”. If the Jays were to have any hope of eking out a series win against these tough Chicagoans, tagging Chris Sale was exactly what they had to do, but it didn’t happen.

Once again, we could write reams about the Marcus Stroman saga. Whither? Why? When? Everybody seems to have an answer, regardless of the question. I’ll add my two cents to the discussion, but the topic isn’t worth much more than that, because, frankly, today we lost to Sale’s performance, not because of Stroman’s. He gave up four runs in five innings. The newly-arrived Bo Schultz coughed up one more in the eighth. In June the Jays have averaged over six runs a game. By my calculation, six runs for and five runs against equals victory, so let’s get the Stroman watch report out of the way, and move on to the other aspects of the quick and merciful dispatch the Sox administered to the Jays today.

The word before the game was that Stroman had been working on simplifying his delivery, primarily by giving up the high, hands-together position he has shown just before rocking into his motion. The change was evident from the first pitch, and for one inning it seemed a miracle cure. Three easy ground-balls on seven pitches and he was bounding back to the dugout in fine spirits. But in the second he wavered significantly, giving up two hits, a stolen base, and a walk, and only escaped without a run scoring because Melky Cabrera came off the bag at third on a steal attempt, and Brett Lawrie grounded into a double play.

In the third the Sox took the lead by scoring two runs with the help of Stroman himself and the usually sure-handed Edwin Encarnacion at first. With one out, Stroman issued a walk to number nine hitter Tyler Saladino. I don’t want to abuse your patience by referring to this as a pitcher’s cardinal sin, but it really is, isn’t it? (And for those of you who have no idea what the Baltimore Catechism is, a cardinal sin is an act grave enough that if unforgiven condemns the perpetrator to the fires of hell. No doubt there are a number of pitching coaches and managers who would happily subscribe to this practice.) With Saladino on first, one out, and the effective rookie leadoff hitter Tim Anderson at the plate, the possibility of a hit and run was clearly on the minds of the Jays’ brain trust. So Stroman made the customary “check-in” toss. It was a perfectly fine toss, if not really necessary, but Encarnacion didn’t reach enough for it, it ticked off his glove, and Saladino was off to second on the error, erasing the double play possibility.

Anderson followed with a slow bouncer to short which he beat out while Saladino came to third. After showing bunt twice, Adam Eaton did exactly what everyone in the world knew he was going to do, and dropped a decent one to Stroman’s left. Stroman fielded it quickly, threw it quickly to the plate, but a little to Russell Martin’s right, and Saladino smartly slid to his left and scored. Meanwhile, of course, Anderson was on to second on the play. Melky Cabrera, whose hitting was certainly not the reason that the Jays did not re-sign him at the end of 2014, predictably delivered Anderson with a two-out single to right and the Sox had the lead.

Now, a number of analysts this morning have parsed every mini-second of Stroman’s handling of the Eaton bunt, but my question is, why even try for the out at the plate? Even if you are facing Chris Sale, who’s already knocked down nine in a row without breaking a sweat, don’t you always concede the first run of the game to get an out at first? Eaton’s bunt was a good sac bunt, but not a base hit. If Stroman throws him out at first, the subsequent strikeout of Jose Abreu ends the inning and takes the bat out of Cabrera’s capable hands.

It looked like Stroman had braced in the fourth, retiring the side on twelve pitches. He gave up an infield hit to J.B. Shuck with two outs on a ball that caromed off his glove and trickled toward first, but handled Saladino’s subsequent comebacker cleanly to end the inning. At this point, he was at 61 pitches through four, and down 2-0. So far so good for him, pitching-wise, though the big two on the board behind Sale was ominous enough for the team.

But then came the fifth, in which Stroman sealed his own, and his team’s, fate, by personally allowing the White Sox to double their lead for Sale. He grooved one to Tim Anderson leading off, and Anderson didn’t miss it. He then walked Adam Eaton, but struck out Abreu again. Too bad the rules didn’t allow for Abreu to have some extra at-bats against Stroman. Melky–who else?–singled to right, sending Eaton to third, whence he scored on a Stroman wild pitch. After another walk, to Todd Frazier, Stroman fanned Alex Avila and Brett Lawrie, but Sale now had four runs to work with, and that was plenty enough for him on this day Having taken 30 pitches to navigate this mini-mess, Stroman was through after five, on 91 pitches.

So the jury’s still out on Stroman, though there were definite signs of improvement. While I wouldn’t want to make too big a thing of this, I would think that the emphasis for him should be as much on his composure as on his mechanics. When he was blowing everybody away, it was so easy to overlook his relative inexperience, but surely it must play a part in his ongoing saga.

Everybody says that a pitcher’s win-loss record doesn’t mean much (just ask R. A. Dickey about that), but there’s good reason why Chris Sale went to 13 and 2 with today’s win. His ERA of 2.79 coming out of the game is a contributing factor, but his ability to get the ground ball when he needs it, meanwhile conserving pitches, is the real reason for his success. In short, he’s doing well because he’s pitching like Marcus Stroman at his best.

Today the air came out of the Jays’ balloon on the second play of the game. After Devon Travis led off by skying to right, Josh Donaldson went with the pitch and dumped a ball over first that bounced toward the corner, seemingly a sure double. But Adam Eaton played it aggressively and, showing off his strong arm, nailed Donaldson at second so decisively that the Jays didn’t bother to challenge the call. Would the Jays have followed with better at-bats against Sale if Josh had beaten the throw to second? Sadly, we’ll never know.

The next Jay batter to reach was Travis, leading off with an infield single in the fourth. Donaldson hit into a double play. Encarnacion walked, but Sale struck out Michael Saunders to end the “threat”. Saunders, who “hits left-handers really well”, say all the pundits, went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts and a popup against Sale. It wasn’t until the seventh that a Jay hitter reached base again. Donaldson led off with a single, again to right. Encarnacion hit into a double play. Saunder struck out.

Going into the eighth, Sale’s dominance was complete: no runs, 3 hits, 1 walk, 6 strikeouts, on 79 pitches. To say he had cruised through seven is an understatement. But in this day and age, even a pitcher like Chris Sale, pitching like he was today, goes to the eighth looking for the wall that he is about to hit. Two solo homers, by Troy Tulowitzki and Junior Lake’s first as a Jay, a walk to Darwin Barney, a sketchy strikeout of Kevin Pillar and twenty more pitches later, and Sale was done for the day. David Robertson breezed through the ninth on ten pitches for his twentieth save, and the win was in the books for the Chisox.

Joe Biagini and Bo Schultz picked up Stroman, with Biagini throwing two effective innings, striking out two and allowing no baserunners, and Schultz striking out the side in the eighth, though he did allow a solo homer to J.B. Shuck that effectively spiked any hope the Jays may have had of sparking an uprising against Robertson in the ninth. This is such a game of emotion, isn’t it? Today, mostly sad, I’m afraid.

Tomorrow night we start a rare visit to Colorado, with Marco Estrada getting the ball first. It will be interesting to see how Estrada’s usual fly-ball-inducing regimen fares in the bandbox confines of Crummy Beer Produced by a True American Fascist Park.

(Not to be repetitive, but if you’ve just jumped on board with this chronicle, I need to explain from time to time that I refuse to acknowledge the annoying corporate names of contemporary major league ballparks. And if you don’t realize what an awful person Joseph Coors, the heir to the Coors brewing empire was, you should look him up. Maybe then at least some of you will stop drinking his swill just because it’s on draught everywhere, and it’s name is easy to remember. Amen, brothers and sisters.)

On a bright, sunny Saturday at Mobile Phone Park in Chicago, the Blue Jays held on for a 10-8 win in a crazy slugfest of a game, of a kind that you may never see again in your lifetime.

Here’s a question for you about the relative value of poker hands: do seven homers beat five doubles? Wrong! I don’t know if it happens every time, but on this day in Chicago, the Jays’ five doubles trumped the White Sox seven homers, and gave them the win on the day. The explanation for this conundrum lies in a single word: baserunners. Besides the seven homers, the Sox had one double and four singles for twelve hits, and of six Blue Jays’ pitchers, only starter R.A. Dickey issued a single base on balls. Of the Jays 13 hits, besides the doubles they had one homer themselves, off the bat of Devon Travis in the second inning, and seven singles. But they also received five walks from the five Chicago pitchers. (Though he might have lost the ball game Sox Manager Robin Ventura won the Who-can-use-the-fewest-pitchers? sweepstakes, small consolation indeed.)

Yes, the weird thing about today’s power outburst by the White Sox is that they were so busy hitting home runs that they neglected to put anybody on base before hitting them: all seven homers were solo shots, and who would like to figure the odds on seven homers producing the minimum of seven runs? Well, if you only have seven baserunners in the game, one reaching on an iffy throwing error laid on Ryan Goins for a throw from third that pulled Edwin Encarnacion off the bag, plus the four singles, one double, and one walk, it’s easy to see that though an anomaly, it’s not out of the question that there was never a runner on when a home run was hit.

On the other hand, besides the Travis homer, the Jays reached base 18 times, via the twelve other hits, the five walks, and a particularly cement-handed error by Brett Lawrie on an easy ground ball. I have no regrets about insulting Lawrie here, after the ungrateful wretch from Langley, B.C., sporting his new, fanged vampire look, single-handedly attempted to tromp on his former team’s tra-la-la to the tune of going three for four with two (solo) homers and three RBIs. But the nice thing about doubles is that when somebody hits a double, whether or not it knocks in a run or two, it always leaves a baserunner in scoring position for the next guy coming up. With homers, they’re just so over, when they’re over.

It was a jet stream at the ball park today, and this obviously provided the optimum conditions for the White Sox’ power display. Here’s a strange statistic for you: Besides the seven homers and the double, and disregarding the singles, only two balls hit by Chicago batters were lofted to the outfield but stayed in the park for outs: ten fly balls produced only two outs. For the Jays, it seemed that the effect of the prevailing winds was to push possibly catchable balls out of reach of the fielders, without sending them over the fence: the White Sox’ fly ball outs turned into homers, and the Jays’ fly ball outs turned into doubles. As we have seen, advantage Jays.

When Toronto’s batting order lined up for the first go-round today they must have been salivating a bit at the prospect of facing their old buddy Miguel Gonzalez. When the Baltimore Orioles found themselves forced to trot out Gonzalez against the Blue Jays, it never turned out well for them, and today there was no reason to believe it would be any different just because Gonzalez was wearing a different shirt. And it wasn’t. Though he only threw 17 pitches, Gonzalez gave up three runs on five hits, three of them doubles to the four-five-six hitters, Encarnation, Michael Saunders, and Troy Tulowitzki. And the damage could have been worse, as Josh Donaldson was thrown out for the second out of the inning trying to score from first on Encarnacion’s double to centre. Only a perfect relay from centre fielder J.B. Shuck to Lawrie to former Jays’ catcher and all-around nice guy Dioner Navarro was able to cut down Donaldson cleanly at the plate. The out at the plate could have given Gonzalez the lift he needed to stem the bleeding, but it didn’t. The second and third consecutive doubles, with Encarnacion parked at third as a result of the throw to the plate, netted two more runs, and the Jays had a tidy three-spot posted.

Gratified, R.A. Dickey came out in the bottom of the first and shrugged off an infield hit by Adam Eaton, a little dribbler to his right that knucksie tried for, but probably should have left for a charging third baseman Ryan Goins (how that man gets around!) to retire the Sox on only 15 pitches, a real rush-fest by Dickey, when you consider how many pitches he usually throws in the first innings of his starts.

Then the Jays went right back to work against Gonzalez in the second. Devon Travis made him pay for walking number nine hitter Josh Thole by hitting a no-doubter to left to extend the Jays’ lead to 5-0. Despite all expectations of Dickey dying of lack of run support again, there he was going into his second inning of work with a big cushion. Unheard of in this strange and crazy world.

The strange and crazy would only get worse, though, as Dickey reported for his second inning of work, to experience what he later termed the “bizarro world” of this game. How about giving up back-to-back-to-back jacks, to Lawrie, fellow ex-pat Blue Jay Navarro, and Shuck, while striking out the side, making Todd Frazier, catcher Alex Avila, and shortstop Tim Anderson look utterly foolish in the process? Well, there it was, it happened to Dickey, and I sat there and watched it, happy beginning to miserable middle to relieved end, every pitch of it.

After a tumultous series in Fenway where his charges won three out of four from the Red Sox, and their close win over the Jays the previous night, manager Ventura was obviously aware that his bullpen was gassed coming in to Saturday. There can be no other reason, unless he just plain doesn’t like the guy, for Ventura to leave Gonzalez out as long as he did, wracking up 8 runs on ten hits with two walks over five and a third innings, while only throwing 81 pitches.

Despite his misgivings about his bullpen, Chris Beck and Dan Jennings went an effective two and two thirds innings, shutting the Jays down on only two walks issued by Beck, and giving the Sox the opportunity to climb back into the game, which they did by reviving Dickey’s dinger demon in the fourth, courtesy of Lawrie’s second on the night, which cut the lead to 8-4. Like Gonzalez, Dickey departed after five and a third, leaving runners on the corners for Gavin Floyd with one out. Floyd gave up an RBI single to that crazy guy Lawrie, the only Sox run of the day not plated by a homer, with Alex Avila coming to third. Then Floyd got Navarro on a fly to medium left on which Avila played it safe and held at third while Lawrie hustled to second after the catch. Then, worryingly, after throwing two balls to Shuck, only his third and fourth pitches of the inning, Floyd called for the trainer and was lifted with shoulder tightness. We haven’t heard anything yet on the extent of Floyd’s problem. Manager John Gibbons called on Jesse Chavez, who induced a ground out to end the threat.

The power assault by the White Sox continued against the Jays’ pen, as Tim Anderson hit one in the seventh off Drew Storen, and Avila hit one off Jason Grilli in the eighth, while Beck and Jennings held the Jays in check. As we came to the ninth, then, the Jays clung to an 8-7 lead. Bend but don’t break was coming perilously close to breaking.

Next up out of the bullpen for Ventura in the top of the ninth was Michael Ynoa, and he failed to hold the Jays at bay, in effect costing Chicago a chance at a tie, which would have been achieved by Adam Eaton’s solo (what else?) homer in the bottom of the ninth off Jays’ closer Roberto Osuna, in for the save. But Eaton’s shot was too little and too late, and Osuna hung on for the save, all because Ynoa in quick order had given up two insurance runs in the top of the inning. Donaldson led off by crossing up the shift with an easy single to right centre, and promptly scampered around to score on Encarnation’s second double of the night and fourth RBI, giving him an MLB-leading 66 on the season. Troy Tulowitzki would eventually plate Encarnacion with a single, ensuring that Eaton’s homer would go for naught, and sealing what would be a 10-8 win against all reason for the Torontos. Osuna got the save, number 15 out of 17 chances, and Dickey, for once getting support, saw his record improve to 5-8, though his ERA dipped slightly to 4.23 from 4.08.

Marcus Stroman will have to seriously brace up tomorrow to keep his team in the game as they go up against the formidable Chris Sale in an attempt to take two out of three in Chicago.

It truly is an ill wind that blows no good, but no harm, no foul, right? Sorry for mixing the imagery, but it was that kind of a day.

Today is St. Jean Baptiste Day, la fête nationale du Quebec. While it’s possible that Montreal native Russell Martin ordered poutine for the Jays’ post-game snack, if he had ordered the flooding of the clubhouse for a little celebratory log-rolling, that would have been cancelled after another dispiriting one-run loss to the Chicago White Sox.

The Pale Hose, who looked so good earlier in the year are now wallowing around the .500 mark, amid rumours that ace starter Chris Sale is on the trading block. Dumping the salary of the best pitcher in the league for future prospects is a pretty sure sign that your season isn’t going anywhere. However, tonight they were good enough for the win as the Jays yet again squandered chance after chance, and utterly failed to support Aaron Sanchez, who laboured, to be sure, but turned in another quality start. Though it pains me to say it, neither team showed much evidence tonight that it was up for making a serious run at post-season play this year.

It’s kind of funny, when you think of it, that such a stuffy-sounding synonym for the White Sox ever got traction. Mind you, you don’t hear it much any more. And isn’t it kind of strange that the Red Sox were never known as the “Scarlet Hose”? Or were they?

Tonight’s game was a dreary affair on both sides. Aaron Sanchez struggled with his control, and allowed baserunners in every inning he pitched. Though he normally works quickly, the number of times he was in trouble tonight dictated that the game would slow right down when the Sox were at bat. On the other hand, Sox starter Carlos Rodon, along with Sanchez an up-and-coming young starter who’s also 23 years old, slows the game down just by putting his uniform on. They used to call the twitchy Mike Hargroves, who was probably suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, come to think of it, the “human rain delay” for his agonizingly ritualistic pattern of patting various parts of his uniform, readjusting a seam here and a seam there, setting and resetting his grip, undoing and redoing the straps on his batting gloves. All of this with one foot planted outside the box, so that the pitcher couldn’t force the issue by throwing more quickly. In any case, Rodon is painful to watch, and induces much shouting at the TV, in the vein of, “Just throw the damn ball, will ya?”

The game was peppered with odd plays, more than the usual number of video replay appeals, more “hold on for a sec while I check with my video guys” moments, a very strange decision by Sox manager Robin Ventura to let Rodon twist in the wind while his pitch count ballooned to 115 over five and two thirds innings, and two nearly inexplicable balk calls, one against each team. Though to be fair, all balk calls, almost, are inexplicable, as is the balk rule itself. When I coached at a fairly competitive level, the only thing I ever knew for sure was that if a left-handed pitcher’s right leg “broke the plane” of less than 90 degrees toward the plate, and he threw over to first, like a sideways dart toss, it was a balk. Other than that, all I ever told my pitchers was don’t move anything for a moment before you start your pitch, and don’t stop once you’ve started the motion. Tonight, Rodon in the sixth, and Drew Storen in the eighth, were both called for balks with runners on first basically for doing exactly the same thing they had done on all previous deliveries with runners on first. Go figure.

Though the call on Storen didn’t hurt the Jays, the call on Rodon led directly to the Jays’ tying run, and cost the young pitcher his chance at a victory.

The patterns for the night were set early. After retiring the side in order in the first, Rodon allowed a leadoff double to left by Michael Saunders, and a walk to Troy Tulowitzki after striking out Russell Martin, who did not have a great night at the plate on the fête, going 0 for 3 with a strikeout and stranding two. Kevin Pillar followed with a bloop single to centre that scored Saunders, who read the hit perfectly and got a great jump from second. Though they took the lead, the rally fizzled as Devon Travis fouled out to the right fielder, and Junior Lake, starting in right field on the day he was called up from Buffalo, struck out, the first of two he would suffer on the evening.

Having wasted a golden opportunity in the second, the Jays would go on to abandon runners in every inning but the fourth, off Rodon, and the seventh, with Nate Jones pitching effectively for Chicago. This familiar pattern culminated in their epic failure of the ninth, when they failed to cash the tying run with the bases loaded and one out, and their two best clutch hitters, Edwin Encarnacion and Michael Saunders, coming up to hit. Sadly, they had Chicago closer David Robertson on the ropes, but couldn’t put him down.

As for Sanchez, this was not one of his best performances, and certainly not dominant. In the first he allowed a two-out single to Melky Cabrera, who went three for four on the night and hit the solo homer that gave the Sox the lead in the fifth inning. Though Sanchez went on to fan Todd Frazier to end the first, it was the first of six consecutive innings in which he allowed one or more baserunners. It’s a testimony to his grit and his growing maturity as a pitcher that he departed after six innings tied at two, having thrown 105 pitches, on a night when, as he later admitted, his curve ball was just not effective and had to be abandoned.

The White Sox got on the board in the fourth when Sanchez issued a leadoff walk to catcher Alex Avila, and he eventually came around to score on a Brett Lawrie base hit followed by two strategically located ground balls. They then took the lead in the sixth on Cabrera’s home run to right. The Jays immediately tied it up in their half of the sixth, as the tiring Rodon created his own problems, and finally forced Ventura to pull the plug, but not until after Rodon hit Saunders to lead off, balked him to second, and saw him take third on a well-hit deep fly to centre by Troy Tulowitzki. He then yielded a disputed infield hit to Kevin Pillar for his second RBI of the night, and a Devon Travis single to right that moved Pillar to third. Finally, Ventura felt that Matt Albers was ready to come in and mercifully sent Rodon to his rest on the bench. Albers did his job, inducing a hard one-hopper to second for the third out by Ryan Goins, sent up to pinch-hit for Junior Lake.

Jesse Chavez came in to pick up Sanchez in the seventh and ended up taking the loss, though it was a pretty tough one to hang on him. Tim Anderson led off and hit a funny bouncer down the third-base line. Josh Donaldson came over and in, and was about to pick it when it took an unpredictable hop and scooted by him untouched, squibbing down into foul territory. By the time Ryan Goins had come over to corral the errant pill, Anderson was at second with a decidedly cheesy double. Yes, I did say that was Ryan Goins in left. Keep in mind that he had hit for Junior Lake in the sixth, and then been inserted into left field, with Ezequiel Carrera being moved to right. Now the fact that it was Goins in left would become immediately crucial, though not nearly as crucial as a certain tackily-dressed, loud-mouthed former catcher and expert commentator would have us believe.

The next batter, Adam Eaton, lofted an easy fly to left that Goins drifted to his left to catch. Anderson tagged at second and surprisingly broke for third. Goins caught the ball, whirled, and fired to third. Luckily for Anderson, he barely beat the throw and was safe at third. Now the estimable Mr. Zaun later made a big deal about how Goins isn’t very experienced in the outfield, hadn’t circled the ball properly to set up the throw, and blew his chance of getting the out at third. And of course since Anderson scored the winning run, that little misplay cost the Jays the lead, and eventually the game, right? Well, no. First of all, Eaton’s fly ball was the first out of the inning. Anderson was already in scoring position with a hot Melky Cabrera and a dangerous Todd Frazier coming up. I would hope he was chewed up by a coach or two for taking a stupid chance like that, even if he got away with it.

Then we have to look at what happened next. Cabrera hit a hot one-hopper that looked to be over Encarnacion’s head and down the right field line. But Edwin leapt/dove back and snagged the ball on his backhand, and basically crawled to first to record the out. Now, in the real world where Anderson was already at third, he hesitated, and missed an easy chance to score. Melky, a generally easy-going guy, was annoyed enough to show his feelings in a “what the hell??” gesture. This, by the way, is an instance of a new game event phenomenon that I have just created. You remember the TOOBLAN, right, “thrown out on the bases like a nincompoop”? Well, I propose there should also be an event that recognizes the obverse case. It is to be called a FTALAN. That would be “failed to advance like a nincompoop.” Which is exactly what Anderson did, or didn’t do. (I know it’s kind of hard to pronounce, but just think of a hissing cat, which is how you feel when one of your guys does it.)

But suppose Anderson had remained at second? (If he had been thrown out at third, this discussion wouldn’t be taking place.) He would surely have advanced to third on Cabrera’s ball; not doing so would have been a FTALAN too far. Ergo, he would have been on third when Frazier hit the RBI single anyway. So stuff it, Gregg, you Don Cherry wannabe!

Chavez struck out Avila to end the inning, and Drew Storen pitched around the Avisail Garcia single, the balk, and the Tyler Saladino hit batsman in the eighth, to keep the lead at one. Zach Duke had walked Russell Martin and stranded him in the Jays’ eighth, and after Storen retired the Sox, Chicago’s very good veteran closer David Robertson came in to lock down the win. Which he did, after a fashion. It wasn’t his best outing by any criterion, but he got the outs when he needed them to preserve the win. After Devon Travis flew out to left on the first pitch, Robertson walked Darwin Barney, hitting for Goins, to culminate an epic at-bat that saw him safely across first on a wild-pitch third strike, sent back to the plate after it had been decided that it had been a foul ball, and then finally walked for real, by which time manager John Gibbons had been tossed by crew chief Ted Barrett. Gibbie was more than a little incensed that home plate umpire Gabe Morales had basically listened to Sox manager Robin Ventura’s whining, and changed his call. Zeke Carrera then followed with a single to left, bringing up Donaldson. Donaldson hit a hard grounder to third that the third baseman Saladino bobbled to his left, grabbed, and then dove to tag Barney, as Barney was diving for the bag. Barney was called safe, the Sox appealed, the review confirmed he was safe, and the bases were loaded on the infield single for first Encarnacion, and then Saunders. While they waited for the review decision, Saladino and Barney stood around third chatting, and it occurred to this observer anyway that the two of them are definitely candidates for one of those “separated at birth” collections. As I reported earlier, Robertson shut the door on our three and four hitters, and that was the ball game.

So, the game, and the story, end on a great deal of talk about a very small play and its ramifications. However, as Aaron Sanchez and all the rest of the Jays well know, if our boys could muster a few base hits with runners in scoring position, how Ryan Goins approached catching the Adam Eaton fly ball wouldn’t matter a whit.

Taking the series from the White Sox is now an uphill task. First they have to win tomorrow, R.A. Dickey going against Miguel Gonzalez, and then they have to give some run support to Marcus Stroman on Sunday, and they have to do it against Chris Sale.

There were more parrots at the ball park this afternoon than you would see at a dozen Jimmy Buffett concerts

.It was Ed-Wing t-shirt day today, and the fans of the Jays’ humble and lovable designated hitter were out in full force, over 46,000 of them, all told. There were parrots everywhere. Parrot hats. Stuffed parrots being waved. Stuffed parrots sewn to shirts at the shoulder. Parrot images reeling across the big scoreboard. (Note for research: is it still called the JumboTron? The name just seems so last century.) Even guys in parrot suits. No, I didn’t see a gal in a parrot suit. Sorry.

And if they had nothing else, fans had their giveaway shirts. At least the first fifteen thousand of them did. For those of you who are wondering why the team distributes such limited numbers of giveaway items, an issue that has been raising increasing concern, the answer is not far to find. Limiting the quantity creates demand, causing fans to line up earlier and earlier before the gates open in hope of scoring a goody. Once in, they have nothing to do while waiting two hours for the game to start but eat and drink, resulting in a concessions bonanza for the bean counters who make the decisions.

The t-shirts were a bit of an oddity, compared to most sports-branded merchandise. Stark white with a crew neck collar, they looked like the kind of GI tee shirt that a young Marine would be made to wear under his or her fatigues in boot camp. On the right front was a rather strange stylized number ten that from a distance oddly recalled the TD Bank logo. Hmmm. But the crowning feature was a spray of brilliant, parrot-coloured feathers printed on the right shoulder of the shirt. In truth, they were a little strange to behold. Though also in truth, my wife and I didn’t get there in time to score shirts, so there’s probably a bit of sour grapes talking here.

Edwin did not disappoint the multitudes on his special day, a brilliantly sunny late afternoon/early evening June affair during which the shadows crept relentlessly across the field as the Blue Jays’ sluggers exacted satisfying revenge on their National League visitors for Arizona’s rather rude takedown of the home team last night. His was one of three homers the Jays hit, three booming, no-doubt drives that represented sixty percent of the Jays’ offence and produced all five of their runs.

Our seats for our first visit to the ball park this year (full disclosure: your scribe follows the Jays via the tube—sorry to disillusion if you all thought I had a press-box pass) were in Section 130, field-level seats just about one section beyond third base. I highly recommend this section if you’re trolling for seats on the ballpark diagram, because the sight lines are great, you’re close to the action if you’re not up too far, and best of all they’re significantly cheaper than the next closest section to the plate. A further tip I would offer based on my experience last September of getting tickets for all three of the crucial Yankee games: if you’re really keen to see a particular game, and you don’t mind going it alone, there are almost always really good single seats to be found, even fairly close to the date of the game.

We were perfectly positioned, as it turns out, for watching home runs by Russell Martin, with two on and two out in the first, and solo shots by Encarnacion and Troy Tulowitzki in the sixth to soar majestically out of the park. Years ago, when I taught creative writing, I found a succinct definition of a poem as a short piece of writing that expresses the “oh!” of a thing. Well, responding to a poem that works well has nothing on the “oh!” of recognition that comes when you realize, about the time the ball leaves the infield, that it’s goin’ out and ain’t coming back! That happened three times today. Not a liner over the fence among them. Not a hold-your-breath-to-see-if-it’s-gonna-make-it among them. Not a twist-your-body-to-try-to-keep-it-fair among them. Just three big, booming, beautiful drives that said to the pitcher, “Groove one to me, will ya?”

Our boys and their loyal fans needed this one today. Since the ruthless dismantling of the Orioles last Friday night, we had lost the last two games in Baltimore, and the first of the two back here against Arizona. We needed to break the short streak and keep the Orioles within hailing distance, and we needed to do it before leaving for Chicago and a weekend series with the White Sox. So it was all good when we broke on top in the first inning, and put up all the runs we would need, courtesy of our home-grown Russell Martin. Incidentally, I was pleased to see in the Arizona dugout the original home-grown Blue Jay, Dave McKay. Anyone who made it to Exhibition Stadium in 1977 will well recall the chant of “Home-grown, Dave McKay” that greeted McKay every time he came to the plate.

After Jays’ starter Jay Happ quickly dispatched the D-Backs in the top of the first, perhaps wisely pitching around Arizona’s imposing slugger Paul Goldschmidt, Devon Travis’ initial at bat in his long-awaited debut as leadoff hitter resulted in an easy popup to Arizona’s talented second baseman Jean Segura (who knew?) However, Josh Donaldson followed with a slashing double into the right field corner that awakened the huge crowd from the torpor it had settled into while gobbling junk for the two hours prior to the game. D-Back left-handed starter Robbie Ray then took a page out of the Happ playbook and walked Enarnacion to set up the double play and move on to the left-handed matchup with Michael Saunders, a wise move at the time, as he fanned the Canadian Saunders, who, unlike Martin, did not have a good day at the office, to ease the pressure.
Things looked even better for Ray when he ran the count to one and two on Martin, but then he lost his nerve a bit, perhaps, and missed badly with his next two, for a full count. Martin fouled off one as the gloomy among us whispered to ourselves “he’s gonna strike out, he’s gonna strike out.” But then came that sweet sound and that soaring thing of beauty, and it was 3-0 for the good guys, and a whole lovely evening of baseball ahead of us.

It wasn’t that easy, though, as it turned out. Ray settled in and blanked the Jays through five, allowing only a couple of walks, a hit batsman to Josh Donaldson, and an infield single to Kevin Pillar, who simply outran his slow grounder to short in the fifth and then stole second, but died there. In the meantime, Happ struggled mightily with his control, but managed, barely, to keep the lid on before leaving after five innings and 99 pitches with his team still clinging to a 3-2 lead. He had an easy second but gave up singletons in the third and fourth innings, the former attributable to an egregious error by right fielder Darren Ceciliani, who let a single by third baseman Phil Gosselin roll under his glove and all the way to the wall. This allowed the Walking Man, Segura, whom Happ had walked with two outs, to come all the way around and score Arizona’s first run. Gosselin ended up on third. Happ ratcheted up the tension by walking Goldschmidt, probably a good idea, and then Rickie Weeks Jr., not such a good idea, to load the bases. But catcher Wellington Castillo then obligingly fanned, the first of four strikeouts on the day for him, to end the threat. The two walks would have forced Segura in anyway, so the run stood as earned.

We should pause for a moment to extend sympathy to Ceciliani, who, in his first start for the Blue Jays, not only committed the damaging error but struck out twice against Robbie Ray, and then meekly popped up to second in his last at bat in the seventh against reliever Zach Godley. When I saw Ceciliani’s name in the lineup, my initial thought was that Manager John Gibbons just wanted to give him some playing time against the lefty as he had only pinch hit since being called up from Buffalo. But I had forgotten that Ceciliani also hits left, which means something more meaningful was afoot, and it was: Carrera is day to day with a nagging injury of some sort to his right Achilles tendon, Ceciliani had been inserted out of necessity.

The list of the wounded for the Jays is becoming a bit of a worry, by the way. With Jose Bautista on the DL, and Carrera now day to day, we also had Donaldson removed from the field for the ninth because of a stiff neck, and in the eighth Justin Smoak hobbled himself by fouling a vicious one off his right knee, a ball that came off his knee so sharply that it rolled to third and could have been played on to first for the out, except it was a foul ball.
In the fourth Happ gave up another run to narrow the lead still further. Michael Bourne hit a two-out RBI single to centre to score Yasmany Tomas, who had doubled with one out. But the big lefty went out in style in the fifth, allowing Goldschmidt and Weeks to reach on base hits, and then fanning the side to leave on a high note.

On this day the Jays’ bullpen was letter perfect. Gavin Floyd threw a clean sixth, Drew Storen gave up a one-out double to Goldschmidt in the seventh and then fanned Weeks and Castillo to strand Goldschmidt. Jason Grilli gave up a single to Peter O’Brien in the eighth, induced Tomas to hit into a double play, and fanned shortstop Jake Lamb, pinch-hitting for shortstop Nick Ahmed. Roberto Osuna nailed down his fourteenth save on two ground-outs, the game ending with Russell Martin on his knees to the left of the plate to cradle a little foul pop off the bat of Gosselin.

Actually being at the ballpark, it was clear that conditions prevailing at the time of day had much to do with the fact that neither team produced anything further after Tulo’s homer in the sixth and Goldschmidt’s double in the seventh. The regular evening first pitch time of 7:07 allows for the afternoon shadows to spread and the stadium lights to even things out, erasing the sharp contrasts of light and dark that exist around six in the evening. But with this 4:00 start, literally from one batter to the next, while Arizona was batting, the line of shadow crossed the plate, and the hitter virtually disappeared. It was as if Shoeless Joe and his ghostly teammates were receding into the mist and tall corn whence they had magically appeared in Shoeless Joe and Field of Dreams.

Ray’s departure in the sixth was marked by a bit of overthinking on the part of Arizona manager Chip Hale. He sent his starter out to begin the inning against Edwin on his own day with a pitch count of 93. His thinking, no doubt, was to retire Encarnacion by hook or by crook, and then have Ray finish with the favourable matchup with Michael Saunders. This kind of worked, and kind of didn’t. Ray did indeed strike out Saunders before departing. However, he hadn’t gotten by Encarnacion, who put his own tattoo on the day with the afore-mentioned monster shot to left. Troy Tulowitzki then finished off the scoring for the Jays with a copy-of-a-copy of a shot to left off Zach Godley. Godley and then Randall DelGado finished up for Arizona without allowing any further damage, and we all drove home slowly through the traffic, satisfied with a 5-2 win, and gratified at the sight of balls hit by Blue Jays soaring out of the park.

It’s an off day tomorrow, and Aaron Sanchez opens up for the Jays on Friday night against lefty Carlos Rodon, whose ERA of 4.16 is decidedly better than his 2-6 record would suggest.

In 1893 the pitching distance was set at the magical distance of sixty feet, six inches. Like the distance of ninety feet between the bases, it seems a perfect distance for its purpose, which suggests, if you didn’t already believe it, that the game of baseball was invented by the gods. But the gods, as you well know if you are up on your mythology, do not always dispense bounty. Sometimes they are tricksters, and send us trials for their own amusement. Sometimes they challenge us, to see how well we will do. Sometimes, as in Andre Alexis’ brilliant novel 15 Dogs, they may even bet on the outcome.

Thus it was that the gods sent us tonight’s Blue Jays-Diamondbacks game, which brought us gifts, but cruelties, as well.

Since 1893, when the aforesaid adjustment was made to the distance between mound and plate, the longest streak of starts in which the pitcher threw at least six innings and gave up five hits or less was ten straight. Last night, our bargain-basement ace broke that record, going six innings and giving up only two hits for his eleventh straight time this year. But instead of setting off firecrackers and dancing around the maypole in celebration of this astounding feat, the glory of the moment was as ashes in our mouths, for the Blue Jays lost the game.  Also lost in the general gloom following the loss was the fact that Estrada’s major league-leading opponents’ batting average dropped to .164, with a couple of nobodies named Arrieta and Kershaw clocking in at .173 and .174 respectively.

Despite continuing his sustained brilliance tonight, Marco Estrada walked three batters, and, as is the way of the world, two of them came around to score, one on a home run by Yasmany Tomas. The three runs would be sufficient to put a damper on Estrada’s much-deserved pride in his accomplishments, as the Blue Jays hitters, whom the Gods sometimes invest with the strength of Hercules, wielded their bats instead like Cupids, and only posted two runs of their own.

In their beneficence, the gods also bestowed superhuman, nearly god-like powers on one unassuming young Californian with a neat beard named Kevin Pillar. He has two powers from the gods, one the ability to track down and secure batted balls that no human, or no human who cares about his own skin, should ever be able to catch. And he also has the power, on occasion, to dispatch lightning bolts with his bat, at the most opportune moment, to deliver runs for his team when they are most needed. Both of these gifts were on display tonight, but, as you can already see, the gods giveth, and they taketh away. The price that we faithful had to pay for seeing Kevin Pillar display his magic tonight was that we had to watch the rest of the Blue Jays’ lineup flail and fumble at the plate, wasting opportunities early to make a difference and give their teammates Estrada and Pillar the support that they so clearly deserved.

Tonight’s was an inter-league affair. The Diamondbacks, who I think represent Phoenix, and therefore must play in the NL West, though I’m not sure about that, are stacked with players who, other than Paul Goldschmidt, their slugging All-Star first baseman, are so unfamiliar to me that I noted their first names in my game notes, so that I would not have to constantly go back and look them up. Their road uniforms, a shimmering charcoal grey, a hue never seen before on a baseball diamond of my acquaintance, only add to the air of mystery that surrounds them.

That mystery extended to the performance of their starting pitcher, a left-hander named Patrick Corbin. Normally, a lefty pitching against the Jays at the TV Dome, in particular one with numbers going in like 3-6 and an ERA of 4.76, should be easy pickings for the Blue Jays hitters. However, on this night Patrick Corbin mysteriously took on the persona of a certain very short, very well-known Blue Jays’ starter, and threw 12 ground ball outs of the 19 outs he generated in six and one third innings of work. Yes, Corbin’s similarity to Marcus Stroman tonight was almost complete, except that he’s left-handed, he’s six foot, three inches tall, and he’s as composed as an accountant (with apologies to any CPAs out there who might be following along.)

It’s not like Corbin was really dominant. He gave up nine hits, walked three, only struck out three, and never pitched a clean inning. But besides giving up the two runs to Pillar in the fourth, he was really only in trouble twice, both times after Ezequiel Carrera, who becomes more electric with each passing game, went first to third on a base hit . In the third, with two outs, he was left by Edwin Encarnacion who grounded out to the third baseman. In the seventh, with one out, he was stranded when Josh Donaldson broke his bat into splinters grounding into a double play. The Donaldson double play was actually induced by righty Jake Barrett, who was called in to put out the fire Corbin had set alight in his last inning of work.

Tyler Clippard followed with a clean eighth inning, and Daniel Hudson earned his first save with a clean ninth, as the D-Back relievers retired all seven batters they faced to preserve the win for Corbin. On the other side of the mound, Manager John Gibbons pulled Estrada after six innings and 88 pitches because of some apparent back tightness, which at this point is said to be nothing to worry about. Jesse Chavez pitched the seventh, and gave up a home run to Peter O’Brien, who thereby atoned for his very awkward performance in left field. Having done his job at the plate, O’Brien was then mercifully pulled for defensive purposes by Arizona manager Chip Hale. To be fair, O’Brien is a reputedly competent catcher pressed into emergency outfield duty, and was making only his eighth start in the outfield in his career.

After the Chavez gopher ball, he retired the last two he faced in the seventh, Jason Grilli blew the D-Backs away on ten pitches in the eighth, and Roberto Osuna struck out the side in the ninth. No Arizona hitter’s foot ever safely touch a base after O’Brien’s blast, but it was too late to save Estrada, Pillar, and their desultory supporting cast.

Finishing where I started, on the mythological theme, the gods as is their wont always give a little dagger along with the gifts they bestow from time to time on us mortals. In the case of Marco Estrado, it was the inability to throw strikes to Arizona’s leadoff hitter Jean Segura. In the case of Kevin Pillar, it was the little devil in his ear who told him to try to steal third with two outs and the left-handed Carrera at the plate, after his two-RBI double, a misguided adventure that ended the only inning in which the Jays had scored. Let that be a lesson to our Kevin: you may make a miraculous catch, and you may deliver at the plate with ducks on the pond, but you may not make the third out at third base. Saith the gods.

As for the team, the dagger of the loss came with what would otherwise be delightful news:  every other team in the division also lost tonight, so while the home boys didn’t yield any ground by losing, they blew a chance to gain on everybody else.

Tomorrow we go to see for ourselves. May we witness the end of the current Arizona winning streak of five, which would also signify the end of the current Toronto losing streak of four! The gods be willing.